THE 

professor's  love-life 


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THE 
PROFESSOR'S  LOVE-LIFE 


This  edition  is  limited  to  two  hundred 
numbered  copies  of  which  this  is  No.  /.  tL  * 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK  ■    BOSTON   •    CHICAGO  •    DALLAS 
ATLANTA  •    SAN  FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON  •  BOMBAY  •  CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Ltd. 

TORONTO 


THE 
PROFESSOR'S  LOVE-LIFE 


LETTERS  OF 
RONSBY  MALDCLEWITH     '^U..<L^-i^ 


/'' 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 
1919 

AM  righls  reserved 


Copyright,  1919 
By  the  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 


Set  up  and  printed.      Published,   September,    1919 


CTd.^^, 


FOREWORD 

These  are  genuine  letters;  names  only  are 
changed,  a  few  sentences  omitted. 

Their  setting  forth  a  love  so  single  and 
so  complete  that  it  speaks  in  terms  of  all 
generations  —  their  references  to  a  young 
American's  high  standards  and  ideals,  his 
ardor  for  humanity,  his  struggle  with  bitter 
conditions  —  led  a  woman,  who  is  now  dead, 
to  ask  that  the  letters  be  given  the  world:  a 
help  to  its  interpretation  of  life  and  an  aid 
to  its  bettering. 

The  above  speaks  of  the  matter  of  these 
letters  —  reasons  they  are  offered  the  public, 
an  ethical  end  their  publication  may  serve. 
The  editors  can  not  consider  their  work 
completed  without  briefly  referring  to  the 
manner  of  the  letters  —  to  their  lyricism  and 
the  beauty  of  the  English  in  which  they  are 
written. 

New  York 
1919 

_     V^    A»    •<*    \J      - 


f 


LETTERS  SENT  FROM 

COLORADO,  ASHBURNHAM, 

CATHNESS 


THE 
PROFESSOR'S  LOVE-LIFE 


28   JUNE 

Dearest  Katherine 

I  shall  not  attempt  to  describe  my  disap- 
pointment in  not  finding  a  letter  from  you 
here.  All  the  way,  and  by  that  I  mean  all 
the  time  I  was  in  coming,  the  sweetest  thing 
at  the  end  of  my  journey  was  not  the  moun- 
tain air,  or  the  cool  kisses  of  the  nymph 
Hygeia  in  some  shadowy  caiion,  but  a  small 
folded  sheet  with  words  of  more  than  health. 
So  great  is  my  impatience. 

Denver  is  a  bright  place  —  showy  equip- 
ages, open-handed  people,  and  everyone 
in  confederacy  to  praise  Colorado.  Un- 
happy he  who  finds  fault  with  anything, 
from  the  stifling  sand,  which  you  are  given 
to  understand  is  at  least  clean  dirt,  to  the 

3 


^;,;,         THE  PROFESSOR'S 

intelligence  of  people  declared  to  be  the  elite 
of  the  Union.  But  more  of  this  when  I  know 
more. 

Tomorrow  we  start  for  Idaho  Springs  and, 
after  a  week  or  so  of  small  excursions,  fit  out 
for  the  Parks  and  to  cross  the  range.  Until 
then  I  shall  expect  your  letter.  Oh,  write, 
write.  I  am  perishing  to  see  on  paper  the 
words  —  I  love  you.  When  your  lips 
breathed  them  they  seemed  mere  echo  of 
my  own  confession.  I  could  not  realize 
they  came  from  your  very  heart.  Every  day 
I  feel  gladder  and  stronger  as  the  conscious- 
ness of  a  great  passion  fills  me. 

It  is  a  great  life-passion,  not  a  golden 
vagary,  a  self-created  illusion,  a  spring- 
dream  full  of  the  flutter  of  doves'  wings  — 
although  heaven  knows  you  have  enough  of 
those  gifts  which  Paris  says  no  mortal  taketh, 
enough  to  enchain  a  score  of  men  without 
ever  giving  a  single  one  glimpse  of  your  true 
heart. 

Do  you  think  I  do  not  understand  that 
heart's  yearnings?  —  that  I  love  just  that 


LOVE-LIFE  5 

willowy  form  and  grace  of  motion,  that  soft 
conscious  face,  that  eager,  splendid  spirit? 
Any  of  these  is  enough  to  nourish  a  life-long 
dream  of  joy,  and  I  love  them  all,  satis 
superque.  My  flesh  yearns  and  heart  aches 
to  think  how  far  away  they  are.  But  most 
of  all  I  love  that  deep,  subtle  and  somewhat 
perverse  heart  that  loves  me. 

For  me  life  has  but  one  solution  —  it  must 
be  filled  with  Katherine.  If  I  have  loved 
Katherine  with  all  my  heart  and  strength 
there  is  nothing  more  my  soul  will  seek  in  all 
the  ages.  God  has  given  me  this  escape  from 
death :  it  is  my  return  to  him. 

I  stop  writing  without  having  said  —  oh, 
ever  so  little  of  what  I  wish  to  say.  Fare- 
well, "  sweetest  thing  in  mortal  eyes." 
Write  me  often,  often. 

DENVER 
19  JULY 

Yesterday  I  returned  from  a  trip  to  Middle 
Park  where  for  days  I  had  been  victim  of 
most  distracting  moods.  Nature  is  nowhere 
more  glorious.     But  constantly,  in  reveries 


6  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

of  joyous  communion  with  her,  I  was  startled 
by  a  gnawing  pain  —  than  the  joy  as  much 
deeper  and  more  intense  as  the  heart's  world 
is  deeper  than  the  eye's. 

I  had  expected  a  letter  from  you  before 
leaving  Denver  on  our  first  tour.  After  nine 
days'  absence  we  came  back  and  —  no  letter 
even  then.  How  my  heart  sank!  How 
many  dark  thoughts  rose !  I  can  not  put  on 
paper  what  I  dimly  feared.  The  last  two 
months  began  to  grow  visionary  —  like  a 
dream.  The  old  hard  reality  of  renuncia- 
tion began  to  settle  round  their  memories. 

We  went  off  again,  this  time  to  Middle 
Park,  to  be  gone  nine  or  ten  days,  and  during 
all  that  time  how  could  I  enjoy  the  tranquil 
beauty  of  the  heights  with  that  incubus  of 
fear  upon  my  spirit  ? 

On  our  return  I  came  over  the  range  alone 
by  a  new  route,  while  the  others  travelled  by 
the  Pass  through  which  we  entered.  It  was 
a  hundred-mile  ride  over  tremendous  moun- 
tains. 

With  my  blankets,  wallet,  cup,  revolver 


LOVE-LIFE  7 

and  poncho  I  rode  three  days  through  those 
vast  solitudes,  often  above  snow-line,  up 
where  pines  cease  to  grow,  still  higher  beyond 
the  grass  and  magical  freshness  of  flowers  to 
where  a  faint  moss  clings  over  the  shattered 
acres-of-rock  —  where  nothing  broke  the 
awful  silence  but  the  mule's  laborious  breath- 
ing, and  nothing  living  was  to  be  seen  save 
the  grey  mountain  rat  and  the  yellow-winged 
bumble-bee. 

From  these  heights  the  plains  shone  far 
away  to  the  east,  as  vast  and  blue  as  the 
ocean,  and  their  alkali  ridges  gleamed 
through  the  haze  like  breaker-crests  upon  a 
distant  sea. 

But  ever,  all  about,  was  the  vast  wilder- 
ness of  mountains,  wTinkles  of  our  ancient 
giant-earth. 

Then  down  interminable  slopes  of  pine 
forest,  silent  and  dark,  down  along  the  course 
of  a  mountain  torrent  now  crystal  clear,  now 
foaming,  down,  down  with  the  blue  sky  and 
fleecy  July  clouds  gleaming  through  the 
feathery  pines,  and  so  like  the  azure,  snow- 


8  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

mottled  peaks  that  sky  and  cloud  and  snow- 
decked  mountain  sometimes  seemed  one !  A 
night  alone  in  one  of  those  passes!  But  I 
must  tell  you  of  this  later. 

Imagine,  sweet  Katherine,  the  anxiety  and 
trembling  with  which  I  asked  if  I  had  let- 
ters! And  my  misery  when  I  heard  there 
were  none !  But  I  grasped  at  a  straw.  Per- 
haps inquiries  had  not  included  my  mail. 
I  rushed  off  to  the  post.  And  my  joy  on 
receiving  a  letter  with  New  York  illy  legible 
on  the  back! 

The  superscription  was  a  mystery  —  I 
could  not  tell  what  it  promised.  It  was  a 
queer  compound  of  English  and  German 
script.  But  it  was  your  letter  within,  dear 
heart,  my  first  love  letter,  and  sweeter  to  me 
than  the  subtlest  love-lyric  Sappho  ever 
penned  in  Aeolic  gold. 

You  had  fears  of  my  constancy!  Heav- 
ens! How  could  I  be  false  to  a  feeling  I 
could  not  stifle  in  my  despair !  —  now,  when 
melting  airs  and  warmth  of  hope  and  as- 
surance feed  it  ? 


LOVE-LIFE  9 

You  regret  the  pain  you  caused?  If  you 
were  to  go  on  in  your  course  you  might  leave 
many  a  wreck  behind.  One  poor  fellow's 
heart  I  know  would  swell  the  list.  But  it  is 
in  your  power  to  weigh  up  the  pain  by  ten- 
fold happiness.  Even  those  who  love  you 
would  not  undo  what  is  done. 

I  will  write  Stanford,  tell  him  I  mastered 
my  feeling  because  I  believed  it  my  duty,  and 
he  can  not  bear  me  ill  that,  after  you  broke 
your  engagement  with  him  I  hopelessly  dis- 
closed my  love.  If  he  will  not  receive  what 
I  say  I  shall  at  least  have  done  right.  He 
would  never  have  shown  me  the  regard  I  so 
long  preserved  toward  him. 

In  the  mountains  I  have  gained  in  health 
and  hope.  Katherine,  I  do  not  want  to  im- 
pose any  sorrow  on  your  sweet  life,  dearer  to 
me  far  than  my  own;  but  the  secret  of  life  is 
not  in  fair  days  and  untroubled  skies.  It  is 
to  love  with  all  one's  soul  what  is  pure,  what 
is  high,  what  is  eternal  —  even  if  it  appear  in 
decaying  form.  I  hope  our  life  may  be  full 
of  cheerful  human  joys.     But  whatever  our 


10  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

fortune  it  shall  not  want  on  my  part  that  de- 
votion which  is  its  own  reward. 

I  cannot  write  of  things  which  even  im- 
passioned breath  cannot  utter.  Autumn  is 
coming  with  its  days  of  gold,  its  days  of 
reverie  and  of  you  —  oh,  such  delightful 
hours  that  my  heart  burns  within  me  at  the 
anticipation. 

Do  not  forget  my  impatience,  dearest,  to 
hear  from  you  when  I  cannot  hear  you. 


ASHBURNHAM   v 
26  JULY 

After  writing  you  from  Denver  I  come 
back  to  Ashburnham  better  and  browner 
than  for  many  a  day.  Our  party  lacked 
enthusiasm.  A  few  weeks  roughing  it  and 
they  preferred  a  Christian  bed  to  all  the  pa- 
gan magnificence  of  The  Garden  of  the 
Gods. 

I  wait  for  your  return,  oh,  how  impa- 
tiently! I  grow  morbidly  sensitive  about 
things  and  sometimes  regret  having  betrayed 


LOVE-LIFE  '  11 

so  much  feeling  to  you  —  lest  I  seem  to  force 
a  return  rather  from  your  compassion  than 
real  regard. 

You  see,  dear  Katherine,  shadows  are  on 
the  great  tide  of  new  life  that  surges  in  my 
heart.  My  love  does  not  rest  yet  in  placid 
expanse  mirroring  the  majesty  and  beauty 
of  the  world.  Fear  houses  in  its  depths 
where  ought  to  glide  only  a  train  of  dreams. 
You  will  have  to  give  me  confidence  who 
have  so  long  taught  me  despair. 

But  hasten,  oh  sweet!  The  days  and 
nights  are  long  and  wearisome.  At  times  I 
feel  like  breaking  away  from  this  suspense, 
this  long  torture  of  restraint,  and  seeking  a 
life  of  adventure  and  toil  in  distant  lands. 
What  would  it  matter  then  if  I  were  sick 
or  died?  There  would  be  no  heart-ache. 
Now  for  two  years  what  have  I  not  suf- 
fered !  Only  your  sweet  voice  and  soothing 
presence  can  banish  these  painful  thoughts. 

You  do  not  write  often.  This  is  my  third 
letter  and  I  have  but  one  of  yours. 


12  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

I  am  at  the  house  of  the  reverend  rector  of 
Saint  Infidelius. 

To  my  heart's  heart. 

CATHNESS 
13    AUGUST 

It  was  not  without  his  usual  profundity 
that  the  great  poet  put  in  one  category  the 
lunatic  and  the  lover.  Now  that  your  let- 
ters have  restored  me  to  myself,  at  least  in 
part,  I  take  advantage  of  this  lucid  interv^al 
to  w^arn  you  against  my  darker  moods.  To- 
day I  feel  lifted  up,  serene,  confident.  The 
only  drop  of  bitterness  in  my  cup  is  the 
thought  of  how  I  could  ever  have  felt  those 
unutterable  misgivings. 

I  had  had  but  one  letter  from  you,  the 
dear  missive  at  Denver,  and  although  I  was 
careful  to  give  directions  for  the  forwarding 
of  my  mail,  a  clerk  neglected,  till  I  wrote  the 
office  —  when  I  received  the  other  two. 

Dearest  Katherine,  what  wrong  I  do  when 
I  give  you  a  moment's  pain!  Believe  me, 
my  wTetchedness  is  but  a  great  passion  under 
the  torture  of  long  suspense.     My  life  had 


LOVE-LIFE  13 

come  to  seem  rejected  of  all  the  benignant 
powers.  Now  it  turns  to  you  as  to  its  only 
refuge,  its  last  supreme  hope.  Your  love  is 
the  world  to  me,  and  in  it  I  shall  find  every- 
thing again,  the  sweet  face  of  nature,  the 
pleasant  wont  of  work,  ambitions  long  for- 
gone. And  still  your  love,  after  it  has  re- 
stored all  these,  will  be  itself  no  poorer  but  a 
richer,  sweeter  mystery. 

Your  heart  has  been  sore  wounded  too. 
Dear  Light,  love  shall  cherish  you,  till  you 
again  look  on  life  with  happy  eyes. 

Two  years  ago  we  took  up  our  way,  each 
by  the  same  dusty  gate  of  pain,  from  the 
Eden  of  Love  where  we  might  have  dwelt. 
We  travelled  side  by  side  upon  the  same 
desert  paths  till  —  how  was  it?  —  we  found 
each  other,  I,  at  least,  near  to  faint. 

Have  patience  with  my  fears.  Every 
touch  of  your  sweet  hand  reassures  me.  In 
time  I  shall  be  stronger,  and  then  my  love 
shall  be  a  refuge  for  you  against  every  grief. 

Dear,  dear  Katherine,  there  is  no  hope  for 
us  in  this  painful,  mysterious  world  save  in 


14  LOVE-LIFE 

giving  ourselves  to  our  love.  And  the  happy 
hours  of  our  reunion  are  not  far  away.  If  I 
ever  get  you  back  again,  I  shall  never  let 
you  go.  These  eight  weeks  have  been  a  life- 
time. 


II 

LETTERS  SENT  FROM 
NEW  YORK 


NEW  YORK 
9  JANUARY 

A  letter  must  be  written,  Katherine,  and 
that  before  I  am  settled,  or  rested,  or  a  bit 
the  wiser  for  all  my  long  journey  —  just  to 
let  you  know  that  all  this  is  so.  This  letter 
has  no  object  appreciable  to  ordinary  reason, 
but  its  real  raison  d'etre  is  —  well,  how  to 
express  it!  —  it  is  something  very  deep.  You 
see  Love  is  really  the  Absolute  and  the  Ab- 
solute must  manifest  itself  —  that  is  sun- 
clear  —  and  as  all  the  world  has  no  other 
reason  for  being  so  has  this  letter  none. 
Katherine  fills  my  head  and  heart  and  to 
write  is  all  I  can  do  —  write  I  must. 

Yesterday  found  me  here.  I  stayed  over 
night  in  Cincinnati,  and  sat  by  a  lone  grate 
fire  and  dreamed  of  long  ago  days  of  hotel 
life  when  my  visions  and  dreams  were,  oh 
so  different!  From  every  long  excursion  of 
memory  I  came  round  to  one  sweet  figure 
which  seemed  to  be  the  enchantress  who  has 
17 


18  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

changed  everything.  She  fares  all  directions 
in  my  soul  —  all  of  my  life  that  is  not  pain 
is  a  tender  dream  of  her,  a  dim  but  beautiful 
future  in  which  her  spirit  seems  to  fill,  in- 
spire, transmute  all  to  its  own  nature. 

But  there  yawns  between  me  and  that 
heaven  an  obscure  gulf.  I  am  descending 
into  it  now  to  seek  a  path  across. 

This  is  only  a  note.  I  am  not  unpacked 
—  to  write  with  comfort.  I  shall  consult  the 
specialists  and  after  that  you  shall  hear  at 
once.  I  have  a  cold  —  one  of  the  petty  mis- 
eries of  life,  you  know,  against  which  philos- 
ophy is  of  no  avail. 

Our  friends  have  invited  me  to  hear  "  II 
Trovatore  "  next  Monday,  You  see  what  a 
gay  existence  I  have  plunged  into.  Ah,  but 
music  now  is  only  a  hemisphere  with  its 
sweeter  completing  in  another  world.  Again 
I  protest  this  is  no  letter.  Write,  my  Kath- 
erine,  without  delay  to 

Yours  altogether 

RONSBY 


LOVE-LIFE  19 

NEW  YORK 
13  JANUARY 

The  enclosed  I  wrote  four  days  ago,  sweet- 
heart. The  morning  I  should  have  posted  it 
I  was  too  ill.  Since  then  I  have  seen  his 
eminence,  the  specialist.  He  has  given  his 
opinion. 

Now,  Katherine,  if  he  is  right,  and  I  have 
nothing  but  the  certainty  of  invalidism  — 
long  and  painful,  or  terminating  more  speed- 
ily in  death  —  with  only  a  remote  hope  of  re- 
covery —  how  do  I  lament  the  sorrow  my  un- 
happy life  has  brought  upon  you! 

Yesterday  I  felt  the  doctor's  words  a  sen- 
tence which  cut  me  off  from  the  world  of  the 
living.  I  cannot  —  it  is  not  in  my  power  — 
to  hope  further,  nor  to  strive.  The  end  is 
actually  now  and  here  for  me.  I  think  of 
you  as  a  glorious,  warm  dream  of  joy,  the 
iiashes  of  life's  sun  before  it  sank  away 
in  the  west,  having  been  cloud-wrapped  all 
day. 

We  shall  never  be  happy.  I  told  you  so 
once,  but  you  would  not  believe  it,  Kate,  and 


20  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

I  let  myself  be  dazed  into  half  accepting  what 
your  dear  heart  prophesied  —  it  was  what 
my  own  so  longed  for. 

All  is  yet  uncertain  in  my  mind  —  all  but 
the  deadly  sense  that  an  end  is  at  hand  of  all 
life's  living  and  learning.  I  do  not  know 
whether  I  shall  stay  here  or  go  further.  I 
must  see  several  other  practitioners  in  order 
to  feel  quite  assured  of  my  situation — if 
there  is  any  conflict  of  views. 

Now,  dearest,  dearest  Katherine,  lift  your- 
self above  this  misfortune.  Your  love  is  my 
best  solace,  and  cause,  too,  of  my  greatest 
pain.  How  empty  my  life  had  been,  had  you 
not  loved  me !  I  could  have  yielded  it  more 
gladly  but  not  so  proudly  as  now.  I  may 
see  you  yet.  I  do  not  know  what  will  be 
best. 

This  letter  will  make  you  so  unhappy  I 
would  not  send  it,  if  I  knew  what  else  to  do 
and  not  break  my  promise. 

How  lonely  and  wretched  I  am  it  is  need- 
less to  say.  I  ought  to  shield  you  from  sor- 
row, and  yet  it  is  my  most  miserable  lot  to 


LOVE-LIFE  21 

distress     you.     Farewell,      dearest     heart. 
Write  to  me.     A  thousand  kisses. 


NEW  YORK 
19  JANUARY 

I  was  ill  when  I  wrote  you  last  and  am  not 
well  yet.  Today  is  the  tenth  since  I  was 
taken  acutely  sick  —  with  short  intervals  of 
comparative  ease  I  have  suffered  all  the  time. 
One  of  my  physicians  thinks  I  have  neural- 
gia. I  don't  promise  myself  his  encourage- 
ment, for  it  seems  to  me  I  am  doomed  to  go 
to  pieces  —  all  my  happiness  and  I. 

It  is  a  distressing  state  of  things,  Kath- 
erine,  when  my  letters  to  you  have  to  report 
conjectures  of  doctors.  You  cannot  know 
how  it  depresses  my  spirits  and  drives  me  to 
desperation.  How  tender  and  devoted  your 
heart  is  I  feel,  and  I  have  no  right  to  think 
of  it  otherwise  than  as  I  do  of  my  own.  But 
the  painful  sense  of  the  incongruousness  of 
lover  and  invalid  will  not  leave  me. 

When  you  are  not  at  hand  to  kiss  away 
my  fears  I  cannot  choose  but  be  wretched. 


22  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

And  in  a  lonely  sick  room  I  have  so  much 
time  for  brooding  that  I  do  not  know  how  I 
shall  come  out  of  the  trial  —  if  out  I  come 
at  all.  I  have  seen  no  one  here  but  a  couple 
of  old  German  University  acquaintances. 

Now,  dearest  Katherine,  do  not  be  dis- 
tressed on  my  account  if  you  are  not  dis- 
tressed on  your  own,  for  all  my  trouble  is  on 
your  account.  My  own  happiness  I  can  sac- 
rifice, but  I  cannot  endure  to  think  that  you 
should  be  unhappy  through  me,  whose  only 
aim  in  living  would  be  to  surround  your 
sweet  life  with  something  near  the  service  and 
devotion  it  deserves.  The  future  is  ominous 
for  us.  But  let  us  have  fortitude  half  equal 
to  our  love  and  we  shall  meet  every  chance. 

Write  often,  and  care  for  yourself  as  I 
should  care  for  you  if  I  were  there. 


NEW  YORK 

22  J.\NUARY 

A  warm  sun  shone  out  this  morning  after 
storm.  Pain  had  fled  and  in  the  troubled, 
sweet    reverie    which    sunshine    and    ease 


LOVE-LIFE  23 

awaken  in  oppressed  hearts,  your  letter  — 
your  dear,  warm,  true-hearted  letter  —  was 
put  in  my  hand.  I  kissed  it  how  many  times 
before  breaking  its  envelope!  Was  it  nec- 
essary for  me  to  see  its  lines  to  know  the  soul 
with  whose  breath  they  were  laden? 

But,  Katherine  darling,  I  did  not  expect 
—  my  ear  was  not  quite  pitched  —  to  hear 
that  divine,  heroic  note.  How  can  we  ever 
realize  the  devotion  of  love!  My  expecta- 
tion has  always  been  less  than  the  greatest 
things  in  life  —  less,  too,  than  its  sorrows, 
for  how  could  I  know  I  should  ever  stand 
helpless  before  such  a  trial! 

I  am  drawn  asunder.  You  do  not  wish 
to  be  thought  of  as  a  child,  or  as  one  whose 
interests  must  be  protected,  but  demand  the 
liberty  of  disposing  freely  of  your  own  for- 
tune, of  sacrificing  everything  to  love  as  is 
the  heart's  right?  If  you  are  resolved  and 
know  your  own  heart,  it  is  just  that  I  should 
dismiss  considerations  for  your  interests 
which  weigh  so  much  with  me. 

Whether  I  live  but  a  short  time,  or  yet 


24  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

years,  and  whatever  my  degree  of  usefulness, 
heaven  could  not  do  so  much  for  my  happi- 
ness as  to  unite  our  lives.  But  how  hard 
are  some  things !  With  what  grace  could  I, 
a  poor  man  and  an  invalid,  marry?  How 
can  that  joy  actually  come  to  pass  in  the  face 
of  all  the  real  difficulties,  and  all  the  wrath 
of  friends  and  wonder  of  the  world?  This 
is  a  question  for  which  maybe  there  is  a  solu- 
tion, but  it  paralyzes  my  will  in  the  midst  of 
the  pain  and  disappointment  I  bear. 

I  have  been  housed  since  I  wrote  you,  some 
days  in  bed  and  at  all  times  under  treatment 
—  not  in  great  pain,  but  confinement  has 
been  wearisome  and  the  thoughts  with  which 
I  have  endeavored  to  beguile  the  hours  were 
not  always  radiant.  When  once  the  nature 
of  my  ill  is  confirmed,  I  shall  feel  much 
quieter,  no  matter  how  bad  the  sentence. 

Katherine  dear,  do  not  be  distressed  —  as 
if  I  were  as  wretched  as  some  other  in  my 
place  might  be.  For  myself  I  have  no  fear. 
That  I  have  no  regrets  I  can  not  say.  One 
thought,  and  one  only,  brings  tears  to  my 


LOVE-LIFE  25 

eyes,  and  tears  not  altogether  sad.  It  is 
something  to  have  been  loved.  Yes,  it  is  a 
greater  thing  than  to  have  enjoyed  any  other 
prize  of  life.  To  be  loved,  I  should  say, 
to  feel  that  however  miserable  one  is,  there 
is  another  sweet  and  noble  life  living  for  us. 

You  have  a  woman's  heart,  Kathie  —  that 
clings  and  in  its  clinging  imparts  strength 
and  hope.  I  can  not  read  your  letter  with- 
out feeling  a  dim  ray  of  hope  pierce  the  dark ; 
without  thinking  such  perfect  love  must  some 
day  blossom  into  the  happiness  it  carries  in 
its  core. 

At  least  it  is  not  certain  that  I  shall  be  a 
useless  invalid,  or  die  soon.  There  are 
other  chances,  however  few,  and  a  Great 
Mercy  may  melt  the  heart  of  Fate  in  Love's 
behalf.  Let  us  indulge  a  little  hope,  till  at 
least  we  know  we  can  not. 

How  my  memory  treasures  every  sweet 
stray  moment  of  our  past  —  handclasp,  kiss 
and  heart-beat,  the  passion  of  those  dear  un- 
fathomable eyes,  the  rustle  of  garments,  the 
gliding   step   and   lingering    farewells!      It 


26  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

seems  I  could  not  forget  those  things  under- 
ground. Oh,  Katherine,  yes,  I  must  see 
you  again  —  die  in  your  arms  or  live  in  your 
embrace. 

I  can  not  write  further  —  my  heart  is  too 
full.  Do  not  suffer  is  all  I  say.  Let  my 
love  be  something  to  you,  as  yours  carries  me 
over  the  gulf  of  darkness  beneath  me  to  a 
region  where  there  is  no  measure  of  days' 
beginning  and  end,  but  only  a  glorious  sense 
of  perfect  life. 

Our  sorrow  will  purify  us  for  love  is 
thrown  in  the  furnace  with  our  souls.  To  be 
more  than  the  spoil  of  wasting  days  and  sea- 
sons is  the  noble  end  of  every  aspiring  spirit. 

Do  not  wait,  dear,  for  me  to  write.  The 
mails  are  tedious  enough.  Goodbye.  An- 
other day,  another  pang  that  you  are  afar. 


NEW  YORK 
1   PEBRUARY 

Your  last  letter,  just  reaching  me,  has 
freed  my  heart  from  great  weight.  Now  I 
can  write.     I  could  not  answer  the  other  let- 


LOVE-LIFE  27 

ter  although  I  tried  over  and  over  again.  I 
can  not  tell  why  I  could  not.  It  had  words 
of  love  and  confidence  enough.  But  for  all 
ihere  was  in  it  such  a  spirit  of  dumb  pain,  of 
despair  —  and  regret,  I  even  fancied  —  that 
it  froze  me  to  the  heart.  You  realize  my 
painful  situation;  you  would  do  nothing  to 
add  to  my  unhappiness  unless  you  were  mis- 
erable beyond  measure.  Poor  heart!  It 
pierces  me  with  yearning  and  pity  to  see 
how  you  suffer! 

How  far  away  seem  those  pure,  bright  days 
of  only  last  fall!  I  seem  to  have  lived  a 
happy  lifetime  in  those  short  months.  Were 
there  not  alternations  of  highest  hope,  of  ut- 
ter despondency,  of  sweet  intoxication?  It 
is  to  me  at  times  as  if  I  had  been  transported 
to  some  far  away  land  and  had  walked  for- 
est-aisles hand  in  hand  with  my  embodied 
heart's  desire,  the  sweet  spirit  of  my  dreams 
evoked  by  some  magic  from  the  great  void  of 
the  unreal. 

Then  I  remember  all  —  it  was  our  walk 
along  the  river-skirted  road  and  through  your 


28  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

father's  woodlands,  and  the  sense  of  its  real- 
ity touches  me  till  I  tremble.  How  dis- 
tinctly I  see  you,  Katherine,  your  slender  fig- 
ure radiant  with  trust  and  joy,  the  setting  sun 
lighting  your  hair  and  eyes  and  lips.  What 
an  infinity  of  bliss  the  possession  of  your 
love  seemed  to  me  —  the  future  so  full  of 
passionate  sweet  life  that  my  spirit  shrank 
blinded  from  trying  to  explore  it;  I  stopped 
content  with  the  delicious  sense  of  that  mo- 
ment alone. 

You  know  what  I  have  suffered  and  still 
suffer  for  your  sake,  but  already  it  has  been 
far  more  than  made  good  to  me  by  your  love. 
I  can  never  be  happy  except  with  you,  that 
you  surely  know.  It  is  my  whole  endeavor 
to  make  that  possible  at  the  earliest  day. 
But  I  see  nothing  for  it  but  patience.  The 
future  is  a  long  time  and  there  are  many 
things  in  it.  Maybe  the  happy  hour  of  our 
union  is  somewhere  in  that  unpublished  cal- 
endar.    Who  knows  just  where? 

You  are  timid,  you  say,  about  speaking 
further  of  our  marriage.     Dear  heart,   do 


LOVE-LIFE  29 

you  know  how  much  I  value  your  sincere  na- 
ture? You  do  not  wish  our  union  so  much 
as  I  wish  it,  and  if  insisting  only  made  clear 
how  it  could  be,  I  should  not  leave  you  time 
to  express  a  wish.  It  must  be.  It  shall  be, 
I  feel,  but  how  or  when  I  have  no  power  to 
determine.  It  is  terrible  to  me  to  be  thus 
helpless,  not  to  be  able  to  fulfill  every  wish 
of  your  heart  —  not  to  say  my  own  one  long 
passionate  desire. 

One  of  —  well,  I  have  been  interrupted 
and  can't  finish  that  sentence  —  oh !  now  I 
have  it :  —  one  of  these  days  I  expect  your 
picture.  Don't  forget,  you  moody  angel, 
and  don't  let  a  mood  usurp  you  in  which  you 
do  not  care  for  anybody. 


NEW  YORK 
11   FEBRUARY 

In  the  midst  of  pain  and  urgent  trouble  we 
can  not  realize  the  supreme  happiness  of  be- 
ing loved  —  sweetest  and  deepest  of  all  medi- 
tations. The  reflection  of  a  loving  soul  in 
our  soul  is  broken  by  agitation  of  grief. 


30  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

But  when  we  are  released  from  pain  and 
awaken  to  hope  of  life  and  health,  the 
thought  that  we  are  loved,  or  better,  words  of 
love,  stir  one  to  tears  of  joy 

I  will  not  deny  that  my  eyes  moistened  yes- 
terday with  your  dear,  dear  letter  in  my  hand. 
Was  it  foolish  to  kiss  the  senseless  paper,  to 
clasp  it  with  the  involuntary  laugh  of  un- 
controllable emotion?  Don't  you  think  one 
could  go  mad  of  pure  longing  ?  I  have  been 
near  it,  I  am  sure,  and  several  times  since  — 
well,  it  is  now  a  very  long  time  and  all  my 
life  before  seems  unreal.  Will  those  days  of 
fire  ever  look  visionary  and  faint  in  the  light 
of  the  full  moon  of  love  ?  I  know,  for  I  can 
forget  my  very  existence  in  a  deep  kiss  of 
you. 

It  is  raining  dismally  and  my  imprison- 
ment continues.  I  am  not  suffering  pain. 
•  Much  I  am  sure  is  due  care  and  precaution. 
Then  J  I  have  had  cheeriness.  An  old  chum, 
who  has  been  in  the  south  since  I  came  from 
abroad,  spent  last  night  with  me.  A  fine 
fellow  with  the  bark  on.     Nothing  will  serve 


LOVE-LIFE  31 

him  but  that  I  shall  go  into  literary  engage- 
ments, and  he  promises  to  find  me  work  and 
vitality  and  patience  and  fun  and  success. 
There  is  no  end  to  the  man.  " 

I  made  no  promises,  but  if  I  stay  here  I 
shall  doubtless  turn  toward  what  he  indi- 
cates. Everything  in  my  future  is  uncertain 
to  a  degree  that  bewilders  me. 

The  rain  without  has  changed  to  snow  — 
great  laminated  patches  —  falling  '  slowly 
through  the  dusky  air  of  twilight.  But  no 
snow  falls  upon  the  parched  lips  of  love,  and 
alas!  there  is  no  Old  Probabilities  of  the 
Skies  of  Eros  to  promise  better  things. 

This  letter  to  my  Lux  and  Lex.  ' 

NEW  YORK 
20  FEBRUARY 

My  expectations  of  a  letter  this  morning 
were  not  booked  for  wreck.  I  slept  last 
night  with  happy  anticipation  filling  my 
head.  But  much  more  delightful  is  the  real- 
ity. 

Your  sweet  face  on  the  little  card  has  been 


32  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

my  meditation  for  a  full  hour.  I  gaze  upon 
it  till  my  eyes  cease  to  rest  upon  the  shadow 
and  dwell  upon  the  beloved  original  locked 
in  the  heart's  camera  —  where  not  a  tone,  or 
tint,  or  gleam  or  grace,  is  wanting.  The  pic- 
ture is  better  than  I  expected.  Still  it  is  not 
my  Katherine,  whose  charm  is  not  in  her 
shadow-casting  opacity  but  in  the  subtle 
sweet  life  which  irradiates  every  feature. 

Dearest,  your  letters  are  as  capricious  and 
moody  as  a  mountain  lake  —  or  shall  I  say 
the  traditional  soul  of  woman,  that  variabile 
semper  of  Flaccus?  What  a  time  I  shall 
have  making  you  happy  when  it  comes  to  be 
my  privilege  to  watch  every  veering  of  your 
moods ! 

Now  I  am  not  one  of  the  most  constant 
creatures  alive  myself,  and  am  apt  to  run 
through  the  spectrum  which  has  the  blues  at 
the  bottom  about  once  a  week.  But  I  must 
sacrifice  this  luxury  if  I  hope  to  be  of  use  to 
you. 

Do  not  fancy  that  I  mean  to  chide,  sweet. 
I  do  not.     Your  sorrows  and  anxieties  are 


LOVE-LIFE  33 

sacred  to  me  who  am  their  unhappy  cause. 
Our  love  shall  never  be  ruffled,  if  on  my  part 
patience  and  sincerity  and  the  all-embracing 
passion  which  adores  blindly  avail  aught. 

Life  is  so  miserable  when  it  is  not  utterly 
filled  with  sincere  love,  that  I  can  not  abide 
any  patchwork  of  the  heart,  any  wretched 
make-believe.  You  must  be  everything  to 
me  or  nothing.  If  you  do  not  love  me  as  I 
must  be  loved,  I  shall  doubtless  die  in  de- 
spair as  cold  as  my  love  is  warm. 

But  this  again  will  sound  as  if  it  would 
say  more  than  it  does.  I  do  not  ask  for  more 
evidence  of  your  love  than  I  have.  I  should 
have  neither  manhood  nor  tenderness  if  I 
did  not  feel  overwhelmed  by  your  assurances. 
Your  love  has  already  more  than  made  good 
to  me  the  burden  of  all  life's  sorrows.  I 
could  and  would  face  it  again  —  not  for  a 
kingdom,  but  for  Katherine^s  tender  longing. 

I  do  not  expect  anyone  else  to  feel  as  I 
do  altogether  —  but  you  love  me  and  I  love 
you,  which  is  all  in  my  favor  and  a  great  dif- 
ference. 


,S4  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

Do  not  let  us  hope  or  even  think  about  my 
heahh.  I  dare  not  at  least  because  I  have 
made  up  my  mind  to  the  worst  and  dread  to 
have  to  do  it  again.  But  we  should  be  cheer- 
ful. 

Why  should  not  we  be  great-souled  as  well 
as  those  we  admire?  Let  us  once  get  the 
mastery  of  fortune  and  ever  afterwards  keep 
it.  Love  is  elegiac,  it  is  said,  and  only  kisses 
will  dry  his  eyes.  But  it  is  true  Love,  "Epws 
ovpdvio<!,  who  must  kiss  away  the  tears  of  every 
sorrow. 

If  by  any  manner  of  means  I  could  man- 
age to  get  the  Valentine  kiss  you  sent  I  should 
be  too  happy  for  dinner  —  but  in  vanas  auras 
recessit. 

NEW  YORK 
23   FEBRUARY 

To-day  I  have  been  with  Professor  Otis 
to  a  neighboring  university.  Its  buildings 
are  of  green  serpentine  marble  in  a  beautiful 
Gothic  spirit  (not  style)  with  grey  stone 
basement,  slated  roof  and  stained  glass  win- 
dows.    The  interior  is  admirable.     I  met  a 


LOVE-LIFE  35 

number  of  the  professors,  sometimes  old  fo- 
gies with  a  vast  amount  of  assumption  in 
their  manner.  School  life  there  must  be 
duller  than  with  us. 

And  after  the  day's  visiting  I  came  home 
to  —  your  picture  and  this  very  inadequate 
communion  with  you.  Still  it  seems  like 
an  escape  from  the  outer  world  into  a  sort 
of  sanctuary  —  into  home.  Every  day  I 
look  at  the  picture  twenty  times.  It  gets  me 
earlier  out  of  bed,  and  the  last  thing  at  night 
keeps  me  poring  on  it.  I  scarcely  know 
why,  but  the  thought  of  you  seems  somehow 
more  real  with  it  before  me. 

Do  not  be  annoyed  at  my  frequent  writing. 
A  letter  but  three  days  back  I  know,  but  your 
missive  which  awaited  me  to-day  set  me  all 
aglow  again,  and  I  must  either  write  to  you 
and  tell  you  how  my  heart  longs  and  aches, 
or  else  tell  someone  else  —  and  that,  you 
know,  would  not  be  discreet  or  like  me. 

Your  letter  speaks  of  a  night  of  last  win- 
ter very  distinct  in  my  memory.  What  a 
desolate  sense  I  used  to  take  home  from  those 


36  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

evenings !  I  was  trying  not  to  think  of  self 
and  to  labor  only  for  others.  But  even  that 
seemed  useless.  "  What  ideas  of  me,"  I 
used  to  wonder,  "  will  Katherine  keep  in  her 
after-life?  Can  I  add  impulse  to  it?  —  en- 
rich it  with  anything  of  worth  it  would  not 
have  known?  She  will  never  know,"  I  used 
to  tell  myself,  "  how  hard  she  made  it  for  me 
to  think  and  speak." 

Ah!  love  is  so  selfish  a  thing  we  can  not 
play  the  self-immolator  at  the  altar.  It 
seemed  sometimes,  in  those  days,  as  if  you 
understood  how  I  suffered  for  love  of  you, 
and  that  you  put  a  cadence  of  tender  pity  into 
your  speech  to  me ;  or  a  gentle  gesture  seemed 
to  say  that  you  knew  it  all  and  were  sorry. 
Then  again  I  reflected  that  you  could  not 
mean  anything  by  such  impalpable  graces 
toward  me. 

Nothing  ever  humbled  me  in  my  own  es- 
teem so  much  as  the  thought  that  the  woman 
whom  I  worshipped  did  not  care  for  me.  I 
did  not  try  to  defend  myself  against  you  — 
how  could  I  ?  —  I  merely  felt  that  I  was 


LOVE-LIFE  37 

judged  and  pronounced  not  equal  to  my  ex- 
pectations. 

How  contradictory  love  is!  In  that 
thought  I  implied  that  I  deserved  your  love. 
But  when  I  thought  about  it  then  nothing 
seemed  to  me  more  absurd.  I  aspired  to  it 
as  the  humblest  aspired  to  the  highest,  in  a 
sort  of  worship.  To  be  rejected  was  like 
being  rejected  of  heaven  —  and  so  it  really 
is,  for  you  are  my  heaven,  the  one  great  re- 
ward of  living  for  me. 

The  family  ought  not  to  tease  you  about 
my  letters  when  they  know  you  can  scarcely 
expect  indemnification  for  their  annoy  from 
the  letters  themselves.  Doubtless  your  devo- 
tion to  a, poor  sick  devil  amuses  them.  Then 
maybe  they  are  waiting  for  your  illusion  to 
pass. 

I  have  written  about  a  lot  of  things  and 
thought  of  but  one  all  the  time.  I  shall 
never  get  the  knack  of  writing  to  you.  When 
I  sit  down  to  it  I  feel  a  sort  of  choking  sensa- 
tion in  the  throat,  a  dimness  about  the  eyes, 
a  general  flight  of  ideas  and  flood-tide  of 


38  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

inarticulate   emotion.     You   will   have   pa- 
tience, won't  you? 

Oh,  that  little  fern!  — what  things  it 
knows ! 

NEW  YORK 
8   M.AiiCH 

I  have  just  read  your  dear  letter  dated  on 
the  first  and  post-marked  on  the  second. 
Where  can  it  have  been !  —  and  all  the  time 
I  anxiously  waiting  and  wondering  and  con- 
jecturing about  the  sweet  missive's  delay. 

You  will  be  glad  to  hear  that  I  am  still 
holding  my  own.  Spring  has  not  yet 
reached  us,  although  we  have  been  seeing  the 
tips  of  her  rosy  fingers  reaching  forward  this 
month  or  more. 

You  know  I  love  everything  you  write  — 
that  if  you  only  scrawled  and  ink-smeared 
the  paper  I  should  be  glad  to  get  it  from  your 
hands.  But  how  can  you  fill  a  letter  to  me 
with  such  a  budget  of  gossip !  —  so  many 
indifferent  things!  You  have  no  idea  how 
empty  they  leave  me. 


LOVE-LIFE  39 

I  am  a  fool,  that  I  have  a  clear  comprehen- 
sion of.  You  have  put  me  out  of  all  conceit 
of  myself  somehow.  I  must  make  a  deter- 
mined effort  to  recover  self-control  and  self- 
regard.  Alas !  this  letter  is  bound,  I  see,  to 
be  new  evidence  of  my  unsettled  spirits.  A 
man  should  not  feel  as  I  do;  nor  above  all 
give  utterance  to  such  emotion. 

Don't  be  grieved  at  what  I  have  written. 
I  don't  mean  to  find  fault  with  you,  but  with 
myself  whom  nothing  reasonable  contents. 
Your  letters  are  my  only  joy,  and  do  not  be 
pained  if  mere  letters  can  not  appease  my  un- 
quiet longing.  I  want  to  be  well  so  much 
more  than  when  I  thought  I  had  no  chance. 

In  view  of  the  res  angusta  domi  it  will  be 
necessary  for  me  to  do  something  this  sum- 
mer, even  if  I  return  to  our  University  in 
September.  I  never  before  felt  what  it  is  to 
be  dependent  on  my  exertions  for  a  liveli- 
hood, for  there  was  never  before  anything  I 
wished  with  all  my  heart  to  accomplish  and 
could  not.     If  I  could  only  see  my  way  a  few 


40  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

months  ahead!  There  is  no  use  trying, 
however,  for  I  can  not  even  know  whether  I 
shall  ever  get  a  few  months  ahead.  But  I 
shall  not  despond  if  only  my  health  keeps 
gaining. 

Now,  dearest  Katherine,  I  am  making  the 
same  sort  of  a  billet  doiix  I  growled  over  on 
the  first  page,  full  of  things  not  very  douces. 
But  I  am  not  half  as  good  as  I  would  have 
you,  nor  as  you  are,  you  dear  girl.  If^this 
were  not  the  last  sheet  of  paper  in  my  desk 
and  the  stationer's  half  a  mile  away,  I  should 
burn  it  and  write  another  —  oh,  so  different ! 
You  must  not  be  grieved  at  anything  I  have 
written.  If  you  could  see  into  my  heart  you 
would  be  satisfied,  I  know. 

Letter-writing  is  a  miserable  business.  I 
am  out  of  conceit  with  it  altogether.  How 
long  shall  we  keep  it  up? 

You  say  you  have  stopped  talking  to  peo- 
ple, except  when  spoken  to.  Shall  you  serve 
me  that  way  when  I  am  back?  My  sweet 
Kate,  you  must  not,  or  I  shall  take  to  not 
talking  at  all  whether  spoken  to  or  not. 


LOVE-LIFE  41 

The  sun  has  come  out  since  I  began  to 
write,  and  the  air  is  vivid  with  spring  light. 

Ex  animo  yours 

NEW   YORK 
15   MARCH 

So  you  are  going  to  the  reunion  of  the  os- 
trakophagi!  Why  it  meets  this  very  even- 
ing, and  doubtless  you  are  this  moment  — 
seven  o'clock  by  my  watch  —  getting  ready. 
Multa  tibi  sit  voluptas! 

But  what  on  earth,  Katherine,  do  you 
mean  by  wishing  I  may  return  so  "  strength- 
ened that  I  may  not  weary  of  hearing  and 
seeing  you  "  ?  Did  I  ever  grow  half  satis- 
fied with  seeing  and  hearing  you  ? 

Oh,  I  hear  and  see  so  little  of  you  that  I 
feel  as  if  an  evil  fate  pursued  me  to  shut  me 
out  from  every  bliss  I  covet.  I  feel  like 
giving  up  in  despair  when  I  think  how  long 
and  uncertain  my  exile  is,  and  that  I  can 
not  foresee  anywhere  in  the  weary  future  the 
hour  when  I  shall  rest  in  the  sweet  shade  of 
your  presence.     Is  that  only  a  mirage? 

Toujours  a  toi. 


42  THE  PROFESSOR'S 


NEW   YORK 
25    MARCH 


Your  dear,  dear  letter  has  come  with  a 
sunburst  of  light  and  warmth  to  my  heart. 
You  thought,  you  blessed  one,  that  I  wanted 
to  "  scold  "  !  You  would  be  right  if  I  could 
ever  feel  like  "  scolding  "  you.  But  I  can 
not.  I  was  most  miserable  because  I  was  far 
away  and  despondent  and  your  letter,  to 
which  I  had  looked  for  a  great  draught  of 
strength,  had  brought,  oh,  such  a  tiny  cup  of 
love  —  but  two  or  three  sweet  words  and  all 
the  rest  about  —  well,  I  have  forgotten. 

But  to-day  my  heart  has  feasted.  I  shall 
always  believe  it  —  it  is  the  sole  article  of 
faith  with  me  —  that  the  love  is  in  you  that  I 
hunger  for.  When  I  can  not  charm  it  out, 
then  I  must  suffer.  But  when  I  give  over 
my  efforts  in  despair,  it  comes  in  pity  with  a 
great  gush  and  I  revive. 

Your  sprig  of  green  I  have  kissed,  conse- 
crated to  Saint  Thomas  and  removed  from 
your  sacred  letter  because  it  is  dedicated  to 
the  Doubter. 


LOVE-LIFE  43 

Your  letter  recalls  a  day  of  last  spring  — 
one  among  many  in  a  shining  bead-roll  of 
memory.  Our  hearts  burned  then  under  the 
ice  of  despair.  I  wept  that  evening  over  my 
formless  sorrows.  Why  should  life  be  so 
full  of  hopeless  yearning,  and  of  supreme 
beauty  which  could  not  appease?  The 
thought  of  death  came  then,  as  it  always 
comes  to  me,  with  a  sense  of  balmy,  cool  re- 
lief. I  had  only  to  wait  in  patience  the  end. 
Oh,  Katherine,  your  love  has  been  a  torch 
that  has  re-illumined  in  me  the  love  of  life. 
The  future  I  do  not  try  to  picture  —  it  is  a 
tumultuous  emotion. 

Now  I  must  tell  you  that  just  after  writing 
you  the  last  time  I  was  ill  again.  The  sick- 
ness gave  way  before  remedies  and  passed 
off  altogether  speedily. 

I  have  heard  the  philosopher  Dellsworth 
lecture,  and  a  famous  quartette  play,  and 
seen  a  much-talked-of  gallery  of  engravings 
and  mezzotints.  Alas!  how  the  devotee  of 
literature  and  the  arts  has  become  something 
else,     Art  and  literature  are  no  longer  the 


44  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

supreme  objects  of  my  desire.  I  know  a 
sweet  girl,  who  may  see  these  lines,  whose  lips 
have  more  eloquence  than  the  great  philoso- 
pher, more  enchantment  than  the  songs  of 
Schubert,  sweeter  lines  than  an  angel  of 
Toschi's  or  Antonio's. 

Oh,  that  wide,  armed  chair  where  I  am  to 
come  to  judgment !  Do  you  think  I  fear  any 
sentence  passed  there?  Perverse  am  I? 
Naughty  am  I  ?  When  you  have  once  sworn 
to  honor  and  obey  (mark  that  obaudio)  we 
shall  not  tolerate  such  epithets. 

Dearest  Katherine,  you  know  my  ardent 
desire,  and  that  the  moment  I  see  my  way  to 
its  fulfillment  I  shall  fly  on  the  wings  of  im- 
patience to  your  arms.  I  do  not  yet  know 
that  I  can  again  endure  the  climate  at  the 
University.  If  not,  I  can  not  see  just  where 
or  when  I  shall  form  other  engagement.  In 
a  few  years  our  University  will  doubtless  be 
flourishing,  and  a  professorship  in  it  would 
afford  the  basis  of  a  modest  support;  at  pres- 
ent it  is  dependence  and  starvation. 

I  dislike  to  annoy  you  with  such  things, 


LOVE-LIFE  45 

important  as  they  are.  Uncertain  health  de- 
prives me  of  much  of  the  ability  I  should 
otherwise  feel  to  make  my  way  in  other  quar- 
ters. 

I  have  prospect  of  trying  my  hand  here  at 
journalism,  and  if  only  for  the  experience  I 
am  inclined  to  spend  effort  at  it.  It  is  no 
embarrassment  to  have  two  professions.  In 
all  my  years  of  study  I  have  never  thought  of, 
nor  cared  for,  business.  I  meant  to  do  what 
I  liked  best. 

What  Light  has  changed  all  that?  —  and 
with  no  regrets  from  me.  But  it  does  pain 
me,  dearest,  to  know  you  think  I  could  be 
perverse  in  determining  what  so  absolutely 
interests  my  own  happiness  and  can  not  be 
indifferent  to  you.  You  must  appreciate 
my  embarrassment  growing  out  of  not  only 
insecure  health  but  equally  insecure  income. 
You  do  not  know  what  it  is  to  be  perplexed 
by  narrow  estate. 

If  life  has  those  moments  —  ecstasies  of 
health,  youth  and  peace  of  which  your  letter 
speaks  —  treasure    them.     How    I    should 


46  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

love  to  take  you  at  such  an  hour!  Should 
I  disturb  its  gracious  power?  —  should  I? 
—  with  my  gaucherie?  What  reforms  of  all 
sorts  in  my  ways  of  doing  and  being  I  prom- 
ise myself  when  I  am  something  more  than 

Your  Inamorato 


NEW  YORK 
2  APRIL 

Our  spring  has  come  at  last  with  the  soft 
laughter  of  April  suns  and  shadow  of  April 
showers.  There  are  no  flowers  yet  —  out- 
side florists'  shops  —  nor  grass,  nor  other 
leafage.  Spring  has  surprised  the  earth. 
But  a  few  days  more  and  the  parks  will  stand 
in  their  splendor  of  pale  green.  This  long, 
cruel  winter  will  be  only  a  softening  memory. 
My  pulses  beat  freer,  if  they  do  not  yet  bound 
with  the  delicious  life  that  makes  you  beau- 
tiful and  glad. 

Your  own  little  rapture  of  a  letter  tells 
me  all  about  it.  Still,  I  have  other  sources, 
and  the  same  news  comes  that  way,  too. 
Katherine  in  sorrow  would  break  my  poor 


LOVE-LIFE  47 

heart  with  pitying  love,  but  Katherine  in 
ecstasy  drives  me  almost  wild  with  a  glow 
and  flood  of  delighted  desire.  How  can  you 
write  me  that  you  are  so  happy?  Don't  you 
know  it  makes  my  enforced  absence  intol- 
erable? 

Fate  means  that  my  love  for  you  shall  be 
burnt  into  the  deepest  grain  of  my  spirit  by 
the  most  wonderful  encaustic  process  of  de- 
spair, hope,  intoxicating  joy,  patience,  ab- 
sence, desperation,  and  some  day  —  if  God 
is  good  enough  —  this  picture  of  a  great 
love  shall  receive  a  transparent  varnish  of 
happy  possession  to  bring  out  all  its  colors 
and  keep  them  ever  fresh. 

Do  you  have  visions,  you  sweet  saint?  I 
never  thought  you  were  likely  to  see  such.  I 
thought  you  were  more  your  father's  daugh- 
ter —  who  has  no  great  phrenetic  tendencies. 
But  so  long  as  you  have  visions  of  the  true 
God,  that  is,  that  servant  of  the  true  God  who 
came  into  this  world  on  purpose  to  love  you,  I 
shall  not  complain. 

But  pity  me  for  visions  are  slow  to  come  to 


48  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

my  eyes.  Instead  I  have  merely  a  faculty 
of  reviving  impressions.  Sharp  memories 
of  kisses  and  long  sighs,  of  warm  hands 
and  tender  obscure  glances,  I  can  feel 
and  see  again  almost  as  when  they  were 
real.  You  do  not  call  those  visions,  do 
you? 

How  strange  a  SaiV^v  Love  is !  He  feeds 
on  such  memories  as  these  and  grows  into  the 
strength  and  purity  of  an  angel.  He  can 
suffer  death  and  torture  with  enthusiasm,  but 
needs  to  be  kissed,  caressed  and  sighed  over. 
At  least  my  love  does,  but  I  have  often 
thought  he  was  a  Sybarite ;  yet  I  know  he  is 
a  hero,  too. 

My  health  is  fair,  although  I  am  doing  a 
great  deal  of  writing  towards  the  book  we 
talked  of.  Next  Tuesday  I  am  to  meet  the 
economist  Saluxton,  whose  works  you  know. 
My  studies  this  winter  —  except  my  brown 
studies  —  have  been  on  sociological  ques- 
tions. 

Give  my  love  to  your  mother  who  is  my 
greatest  benefactor,  for  did  she  not  give  me 


LOVE-LIFE  49 

more  than  life?     To  you  I  send  what  Ca- 
tullus calls  seges  basiorum. 

NEW  YORK 
,  12  APRIL 

It  is  the  woman's  genius,  dearest,  to  find 
herself  at  home  in  any  novel  situation  sooner 
than  can  one  of  my  embarrassed  sex.  While 
my  pulses  are  still  so  much  a  flutter  with  your 
first  kiss  that  my  letters  are  full  of  the  turbu- 
lence of  love,  yours  have  settled  into  the  clear 
full  strain,  the  ardent,  even  beat  which  is 
ruffled  only  by  your  gay  sallies  of  tender 
mirth.  How  ineffably  beautiful  you  are  to 
me! 

There  are  many  felicities  Lgve  has  for 
those  who  love  and  fear  him,  and  one  crown- 
ing beatitude  —  to  feel  that  overpowering, 
tender  yearning  in  which  all  things  blend 
that  are  high,  ardent  and  pure  —  a  senti- 
ment which  carries  in  itself  the  assurance 
that  it  is  stronger  than  time  or  death. 

Our  flesh,  our  individuality,  is  but  a  veil 
of  the  Eternal  and  Infinite  Life,  and  Love 
burns  through  this  veil.     We  are  not  to  seek 


50  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

to  enter  the  formless,  divine  Spirit  beyond, 
but  stop  and  worship  its  great  heat  and  light 
at  its  sweet  human  portal.  It  is  strange  that 
anyone  who  truly  loves  should  need  a  relig- 
ion of  the  churches. 

Do  you  think  or  wonder  that  my  love  sug- 
gests such  thoughts?  You  will  not  think 
it  any  the  less  human  and  tender  because  it 
is  worship  as  well  as  love?  Do  not  fancy 
that  it  is  for  that  reason  exacting  and  vision- 
ary, that  I  look  for  what  the  world  calls  "  di- 
vine perfections."  It  is  of  all  loves  the  least 
careful  about  such  divinities. 

One  thing  only  —  a  great  thing  —  it  does 
call  for  —  that  is  a  perfect,  measureless  trust 
and  love  in  return.  Give  me  that  and  you 
can  have  no  faults  to  my  eyes.  Then  you 
may  live  a  gay,  sweet  lady  with  all  the  petu- 
lance, caprice  and  whim  you  will,  and  I  shall 
be  your  mad  lover  always.  I  reap  in  ad- 
vance joy  of  the  inward  assurance  I  feel  that 
my  love  will  be  always  the  same  tremulous 
passion  —  the  same  feet-kissing  devotion  it 
is  now. 


LOVE-LIFE  51 

You  want  to  know  if  you  shall  see  me  in 
May  —  when  woods  are  green  and  thrushes 
sing.  I  have  no  patience  and  tact  to  ac- 
complish what  I  wish,  now  spring  is  come 
and  you  are  calling.  Still  I  must  wait  till  I 
see  the  president  of  the  new  university  at 
Belchester,  who  comes  on  next  month  —  the 
institution  is  to  be  made  a  great  affair. 
Then  I  shall  let  go  all  my  fastenings  and 
come  under  full  sail  straight  to  your  arms. 

I  do  not  tell  of  the  incidents  of  my  stay 
here.  They  will  fill  our  confidences  at 
home.  Do  I  find  fault  with  your  sweet  tem- 
per and  cheerful  moods  ?  Far  from  it.  Be 
as  serene  and  caustic  as  your  heart  desires, 
so  you  keep  your  pungency  for  the  faculty 
and  your  serenity  for  me. 

To  the  princess  Katherine 

Her  most  devoted  thrall 

NEW  YORK 
25  APRTL 

Dear  heart,  you  will  have  distressed  your- 
self over  this  delay,  I  fear,  before  you  can 
hear  account  of  it.     I  was  in  Washington 


52  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

when  your  last  sweet  letter  came  —  away  two 
days  visiting  an  old  friend.  With  all  my 
movement  my  health  remains  in  statu  quo, 
unassailed  by  pain,  although  I  do  not  feel 
vigor  with  the  returning  spring.  How  can 
I  after  so  long  a  deprivation  of  joy?  Shall 
I  ever  be  well  and  strong  and  glad  alto- 
gether ? 

You  speak  with  some  apology  of  a  certain 
type  of  woman.  Is  it  because  they  love  so 
little?  —  have  so  little  ardor?  —  or  because 
their  hearts  are  always  straying  and  never 
perfectly  true?  It  must  be  some  such  rea- 
son. Many  women  are  beautiful  and  bril- 
liant and  joyous.  Are  none  innocent  and 
ardent  and  true?     Do  not  let  me  think  that. 

You  know  I  always  feared  I  could  not 
make  you  love  me  as  I  love  you.  Do  not  un- 
deceive me  yet.  You  once  hoped  that  I 
should  be  able  to  re-inspire  your  heart  with  a 
heat  it  no  longer  felt.  I  have  the  letter,  Kate 
darling.  It  made  me  very  miserable,  but  it 
was  at  least  frank.     What  could  I  do?     You 


LOVE-LIFE  53 

trusted  me.  You  seemed  to  want  to  love  me, 
and  I  did  what  I  should  have  thought  myself 
incapable  of  —  tried  to  disguise  facts  to  my- 
self. Do  you  love  me  at  last?  "  Yes,"  I 
think  your  heart  says  to  itself,  "  but  not  quite 
perfectly.  That  will  come  in  time.  If  not, 
he  need  never  know." 

But  what  am  I  writing  ?  —  words  which 
ought  not  to  be  written.  I  should  not  send 
them  if  not  sending  would  annihilate  them. 
But  you  are  my  best  soul  and  I  will  keep 
nothing  from  you  —  not  even  my  doubts. 
Forgive  them,  Katherine.  I  shall  not  al- 
ways doubt,  and  if  I  were  to,  I  should  love 
you  all  the  same. 

Our  friends  here  have  found  us  out  and 
they  came  in  the  other  day  —  the  rascals !  — 
and  pretended  to  know  all  about  it  They 
congratulated  me  most  warmly,  and  are  of 
opinion  that  I  do  not  deserve  half  my  fortune 
—  which  shows  how  sound  their  judgment 
is,  for  I  myself  am  of  that  mind,  too. 

It  will  be  May  before  I  hear  from  you 


54  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

again.     I  hasten  this  letter  to  hasten  its  an- 
swer 

Yours  eternally 

RONSBY 


NEW  YORK 
5   MAY 

A  sweet  letter  this  morning  to  flood  the 
day  with  sunshine.  I  had  waited  for  it  anx- 
iously. Now  let  me  be  thankful  and  not 
complain  of  delay.  I  am  just  recovering 
from  cold  taken  in  some  mysterious  way. 
How  grateful  I  am  that  it  has  not  settled  into 
the  old  neuralgia!  Nothing  in  my  health 
to-day  should  lead  to  pride,  but  the  worst  a 
cold  can  do  is  nothing  to  the  old  evil.  Cer- 
tainly I  have  made  headway. 

Dear  heart,  you  ask  if  my  doubts  are  the 
fruit  of  absence,  or  if  I  feel  them  when  with 
you.  Won't  you  believe  me  when  I  say  that 
I  do  not  doubt  you.  I  rest  upon  your  love. 
My  own  faith  is  too  utter  to  harbor  a  sus- 
picion of  yours.  From  what  could  I  save 
myself    by    ever    so    sagacious    doubting? 


LOVE-LIFE  55 

There  is  but  one  thing  in  this  world  I  should 
rather  not  know  if  it  happened  —  that  you 
had  ceased  to  love  me. 

No,  my  heart  is  all  too  earnest,  and  has  too 
many  heaven-kissing  projects  of  life  builded 
upon  your  love  to  lose  more  time  in  testing 
the  foundation.  If  it  is  not  solid  everything 
will  come  down  with  a  crash  and  bury  me  in 
the  ruins ;  but  let  me  die  rather  than  not  build 
at  all. 

Now  I  have  news  you  will  not  welcome  I 
know.  The  editor  of  The  Hustings  holds 
out  inducements  to  me  to  try  my  hand  at  his 
paper.  If  I  succeed  I  shall  be  relieved  of 
the  drudgery  of  night  editing,  and  shall  have 
only  prime  editorial  work.  I  am  not  con- 
fident of  my  aptitude,  and  if  I  do  not  suc- 
ceed to  my  complete  satisfaction  shall  drop  it. 
This  will  keep  me  from  you.  But  if  I  can 
get  employment  for  the  summer  I  must. 
Expenses  of  specialists  and  no  incoming  sal- 
ary trouble  me. 

Another  object  is  worth  my  attention. 
The  great  Barrington  endowment  is  to  be 


56  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

organized  and  the  projected  university 
opened.  Of  course  I  can  not  be  confident  of 
a  post  in  it.  But  it  will  advantage  me  to 
meet  its  organizers,  as  I  am  invited  to,  and 
know  its  relations.  A  man  can  not  live  on 
the  paltry  salary  at  our  University  —  since 
the  late  cut. 

But  my  heart  is  breaking  to  get  back  to 
you.  Hundreds  of  miles  part  us,  and  all 
these  duties  call  and  keep  me,  strongest  of  all 
the  hope  of  sooner  saying  to  my  dearest, 
"  Come,  share  my  life." 

Doubtless  it  will  never  be  luxurious.  It 
may  be  plainer  than  I  hope,  but  with  Kather- 
ine's  love  it  will  be  a  life  to  be  envied  by  all 
who  have  sense  to  understand  it. 

My  plans  here  may  in  a  few  days  go  up  in 
smoke  and  I  able  to  keep  my  original  en- 
gagement about  Commencement.  Let  us 
hold  ourselves  in  patience. 

NEW  YORK 
14  MAY 

Your  dear  letter  came  yesterday,  and  with 
its  new  pulses  of  love  mingled  a  memory  of 


LOVE-LIFE  57 

the  older  —  a  year  old  to-day.     This  is  my 
heart's  birthday  after  long  travail. 

How  strange  the  sunlight  on  that  May 
afternoon!  And  what  a  delicious  sense  of 
mysterious  happiness  awoke  me  suddenly  the 
next  morning  long  before  my  usual  hour! 
It  was  a  second  before  my  eyes  were  used  to 
the  inner  light  and  I  could  think  of  the  cause. 
Then  the  thought  came  rushing  —  "  Kath- 
erine's  kiss  —  yes,  I  kissed  her.  She  loves 
me."  It  seemed  a  dream;  but  songs  of  birds 
and  the  morning's  brilliance  helped  to  make 
it  real. 

How  often  before  had  I  wakened  with  the 
heavy  sense  of  misery,  dumb,  not  understood 
—  till  the  old  settled  mood  returned  and  I 
knew  too  well  why  my  heart  was  sick.  At 
times  I  strove  for  days  to  banish  your  image. 
I  struggled  to  think  I  could  forget,  or  at  least 
overcome.  Then  I  would  break  down  and 
revel  in  a  dream  of  you,  and  it  would  end  in 
the  wild  misery  of  a  fresh  despair.  Oh, 
Katherine,  you  did  not  know  what  it  cost  me 
to  live  those  years  in  your  sight. 


58  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

It  is  all  turned  to  joy  now.  The  lesson  I 
learned  I  shall  never  lose.  I  ate  the  bitter 
bt-ead  of  humiliation  till  it  was  no  longer 
bitter,  and  I  made  renunciation  a  companion. 
Life  was  over  for  me;  and  it  has  been  a  long 
time  regaining  hold  upon  me.  You,  Kath- 
erine,  brought  my  new  life  and  are  utterly 
inseparable  from  it. 

Day  after  to-morrow  I  begin  work  on  The 
Hustings  —  as  first  assistant.  The  editor 
thinks  I  have  the  best  sort  of  journalistic  ma- 
terial, and  he  anticipates  success  for  me.  I 
am  simply  making  an  experiment,  and  can 
not  fail  to  profit  by  a  few  months  in  a  large 
office  and  responsible  position. 

I  shall  not  cease  to  look  for  a  good  location 
as  professor  of  something  somewhere ;  but  if 
I  should  find  that  I  really  have  a  career  in 
journalism,  why  not  stick  to  it?  Certainly 
I  prefer  an  academic  life,  and  am  inclined  to 
think  my  work  lies  in  the  University,  but  I 
will  try  this  thing  a  turn. 

Your  undergraduate  studies  are  all  over 
—  laus  Deo  semper.     But  if  I  were  at  home 


LOVE-LIFE  59 

you  would  have  to  conjugate  an  old  verb  I 
know  all  in  the  dual  number. 

NEW  YORK 
26   MAY 

Yesterday,  my  Kate,  when  I  awoke  at 
noon,  I  found  your  dear  letter  on  my  pillow. 
The  good  people  of  the  house  know  with 
what  eagerness  I  receive  those  slender  blue 
envelopes,  and  they  thought  to  afford  me 
delightful  surprise.  They  have  dim  con- 
ception of  the  thoughts  the  little  messenger 
inspired.  Matter-of-fact  people,  they  never 
sighed  like  furnace.  One  right  conclusion 
they  have  come  to,  for  they  think  you  must 
be  an  angel  to  be  so  loved. 

My  health  keeps  fair  and  I  endure  the 
night-work  satisfactorily.  The  most  dis- 
agreeable feature  of  my  business  is  that  I  am 
literally  muzzled  —  kept  from  a  word  on 
those  subjects  which  interest  me  most.  The 
Hustings  is  an  administration  organ  and  un- 
der obligations  to  nearly  all  the  miserable 
monopolies  in  the  country.  All  good  para- 
graphs are  on  the  other  side.     It  is  just  the 


60  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

office  in  which  to  acquire  a  newspaper  style. 
You  are  bound  to  say  nothing  in  an  inter- 
esting way. 

Now,  Kathie  dearest,  what  do  you  expect 
to  do  this  summer?  If  you  enjoy  it,  my  own 
imprisonment  will  not  be  so  hard  to  bear. 
Write  me  cheerful  letters  anyhow,  for  these 
conditions  of  life  strain  me  and  I  feel  my  pa- 
tience sometimes  almost  spent. 

Your  love  grows  more  and  more  the  only 
deep,  rich  heart  of  joy  in  the  world  for  me. 
How  I  can  live  on  without  you  I  can  not  un- 
derstand when  I  think  of  it.  I  only  know 
the  long  days  do  wear  away 

When  shall  we  have  a  home  together  and 
a  united  life?  It  depends  upon  the  success 
I  have  in  an  untried  field.  My  heart  sick- 
ens to  think  of  it.  I  shall  not  falter  but  be 
nerved  by  my  desire  —  well  nigh  intolerable 
—  for  that  life. 

Work  presses  and  I  must  break  off.  One 
long  sweet  kiss  will  make  me  whole  again,  so 
why  complain? 

Forever  your  Ronsby 


LOVE-LIFE  61 

NEW  YORK 
30   MAY 

Not  to  lose  its  effect  what  you  say  should 
be  spoken  slowly  and  with  intelligent  em- 
phasis, the  fine  lines  in  it  with  a  sense  of 
their  worth.  They  will  then  be  distin- 
guished by  your  auditors.  Do  not  seem  to 
share  a  common  ardor.  You  w^ill  be  under- 
stood save  by  few,  and  you  might  as  well  be 
aware  of  the  fact. 

Come  in  at  the  finish  with  all  the  cool  sense 
of  superiority  which  you  have  a  right  to  feel. 
The  public  performance  ought  not  to  give 
you  a  moment's  trepidation.  Be  resolved  to 
be  heard  by  clearest  and  most  weighted  ut- 
terance. It  is  the  thought  which  fastens  at- 
tention. 

My  health  continues  fair,  and  my  work 
growls  easier,  although  if  I  would  improve  I 
must  make  great  exertion.  One  must  pry 
into  everything  to  be  a  journalist. 

Spring  nearly  flown  and  almost  half  a 
year  from  you !  Your  patience  grows  while 
mine  gets  shorter  as  the  days  go  on. 


62  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

NEW  YORK 
2   JUNE 

Your  message  has  come  in  so  late  this 
evening  that  I  have  but  a  moment  to  answer 
before  going  down  to  work.  I  can  not  wait 
till  to-morrow. 

Sweet  Katherine,  I  submit  to  your  pro- 
voking little  disclosure  that  you  have  some- 
thing to  tell  me,  that  I  must  make  myself 
ready  to  hear  —  and  then  you  explode  the 
bubble  with  a  sigh  of  solicitude  for  my  peace 
of  mind  and  a  puff  of  contempt  for  the  story, 
leaving  me  as  much  in  the  dark  as  ever.  If 
I  had  not  a  good  conscience  how  this  method 
of  doing  would  torture  me !  As  it  is  I  only 
itch  to  get  my  arms  about  your  shoulders  — 
and  then  wouldn't  I  make  you  talk?  —  or 
kiss  you  till  you  did. 

Your  letter  is  full  of  the  tenderest  heart  on 
earth,  my  own  dear  Katherine's.  You  have 
a  secret  you  want  to  tell  me,  do  you  not?  Is 
it  that  you  already  have  a  home  for  me  if  I 
will  accept  it?  You  fear  the  offer  will  hurt 
me  and  write  in  enigmas. 


LOVE-LIFE  63 

I  am  in  no  wise  prejudiced  against  a  wife's 
wealth.  A  home  is  the  work  of  husband 
and  wife,  but  present-day  social  usage,  and 
the  unequal  position  of  women  and  men, 
make  the  husband  responsible  for  the  support 
of  this  home.  He  should  feel  his  ability  to 
sustain  it  before  he  undertakes  it.  After- 
wards he  may  receive  what  help  he  legiti- 
mately can.  I  need  not  assure  you  that  I 
love  you  too  well  to  feel  any  delicacy  about 
this  subject.  If  I  were  not  so  certain  of  my 
love  I  might  not  trust  my  motives. 

You  speak  of  my  ideals  that  must  be  sac- 
rificed on  your  account,  and  are  unwilling  it 
should  be.  Dear  heart,  do  you  know  I  have 
no  ideals  now.  I  have  an  idol  and  a  holo- 
caust of  all  my  dreams  before  it  would  glad- 
den me  if  it  gladdened  it  —  and  you  are  that 
idol. 

I  get  but  forty  dollars  a  week,  but  this  will 
be  raised  probably  to  fifty  before  long,  if  I 
continue  to  give  satisfaction.  Of  course  I 
should  not  stay  long  at  the  work  at  that 
figure,  but  it  will  probably  be  a  year  before 


64  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

my  services  will  bring  more.  You  see  the 
means  over  which  I  dispose.  We  might  live 
here  modestly  —  very  —  and  I  should  be 
most  happy  to  be  with  you. 

Now  Katherine,  it  remains  with  you  to  say 
if  we  shall  end  this  heart-ache,  not  as  Hamlet 
proposed  to,  but  only  as  it  can  be  ended.  I 
do  not  venture  to  insist  because  my  offer  is 
not  better.  My  own  heart  has  but  one  desire. 
You  talk  to  a  soul  that  echoes  every  wish  of 
yours.  Do  not  be  timid.  Write  a  clean- 
breasted  letter.  If  I  have  mistaken  your 
meaning,  you  will  pardon  me  and  be  assured 
that  nothing  but  the  loyalest  love  speaks  in 
all  I  write  you. 

Goodnight,  sweet  angel.  I  must  go  a-par- 
agraphing. 

NEW  YORK 
12  JUNE 

Two  letters  of  yours  unanswered,  dear 
Katherine.  It  is  almost  more  than  I  have 
courage  to  tell  you.  I  am  recovering  from 
another  attack  of  neuralgia.  Day  before 
yesterday  it  began  to  threaten  and  forced  me 


LOVE-LIFE  65 

from  work.  All  day  yesterday  I  was  in  tor- 
ture, and  now  I  am  sore  and  exhausted.  I 
seem  to  have  contracted  a  cold  —  and  the 
pain  returned  after  a  long  interval. 

I  had  grown  so  confident  that  I  almost  ex- 
pected never  again  to  suffer.  It  now  seems 
as  if  I  had  gained  nothing,  and  I  am  in  the 
depths.  "  What  if  it  keeps  coming,"  I  think. 
Then  all  the  old  misery  is  back. 

Dearest,  we  are  certainly  to  be  tested  to  the 
limit  of  endurance.  Times  are  so  hard  that 
no  salaries  are  increased,  and  I  can  not  tell 
when  I  shall  be  able  to  command  the  mini- 
mum pay  which  would  warrant  my  taking 
you  to  share  my  fortunes. 

If  ceaseless  longing  and  the  courage  of  any 
sacrifice  could  shorten  the  time,  it  would  in- 
deed be  brief.  We  must  still  drift  without 
a  clear  point  to  sail  by  save  the  pole  star  of 
our  constancy.  We  may -come  no  nearer  to- 
gether, but  we  fall  no  further  apart. 

Your  sweet,  sanguine  letters,  led  by  your 
high  spirits,  see  everything  in  rosy  light. 
You  say  you  wish  to  be  useful  —  to  have  def- 


66  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

inite  occupation  —  when  we  are  married.  It 
is  a  noble  ambition.  It  will  make  your  life 
happier  than  it  could  be  in  any  petted  idle- 
ness. But  it  is  most  difficult  to  be  useful  in 
the  way  you  mean.  Social  conditions  are 
such  that  it  would  be  almost  impossible  for 
you  to  take  any  initiative  yourself.  And  I 
would  not  wish  you  to.  In  time  my  pur- 
suits might  be  such  that  your  assistance 
would  be  money's  worth.  For  the  present 
there  is  nothing  you  could  do  that  would 
make  any  adequate  return  unless  you  starved 
at  some  profession  —  quod  avertet  Dens. 

As  regards  you  I  share  the  aversion  Amer- 
ican men  feel  toward  married  women's  labor 
in  the  larger  world.  I  would  gladly  see  your 
time  pleasantly  occupied  by  pursuits  you 
relish  —  but  you  should  not  be  pushed  to  do 
aught  but  enjoy  a  rational  and  moderate  ac- 
tivity. Such  labor  may  be  made  useful.  It 
has  no  market.   What  men  pay  for  is  slavery. 

I  never  knew  before  what  it  was  to  be  poor. 
It  means  to  suffer  every  deprivation  under 
heaven.     With  plenty  to  eat  and  wear  and 


LOVE-LIFE  67 

go  on,  I  am  poor  because  it  suffices  only  for 
me.  What  do  I  care  for  all  the  world  with- 
out you!  If  I  had  been  trained  to  some 
bread  profession  and  not  loitered  so  long  in 
the  lotos-land  of  learned  dreams,  I  should 
not  now  be  so  helpless.  Now  I  know  the 
difference  between  a  visionary  and  a  prac- 
tician, and  am  endeavoring  with  all  my  might 
to  become  the  second  from  being  the  first. 

A  great  newspaper  office  is  a  good  school, 
for  it  is  a  focus  of  all  the  tendencies  and  in- 
fluences which  prevail  in  the  actual  world. 
There  I  see  all  the  hideous  deformity  of  life. 
My  abhorrence  deepens  while  my  composure 
increases.  How  different  from  the  aca- 
demic regions  where  I  have  tarried !  —  where 
the  purged  spirits  of  the  great  and  good  reign 

—  where  patient  and  candid  zeal  serve. 
The  summer  will  soon  be  spent  and  au- 
tumn here.     Shall  golden  October  see  us  to- 
gether?    Would  to  God  I  could  tell!      If 
my  health  holds,  and  if  my  salary  improves 

—  these  seem  to  be  the  conditions.     It  would 
not  be  worth  my  while  to  return  in  Septem- 


68  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

ber  to  share  the  University  crust  with  the 
handful  of  hungry  professors.  It  may  never 
be  worth  while  to  go  back,  although  there  are 
many  reasons  why  Ashburnham  should  be  a 
happy  abiding-place  for  us.  In  years  to 
come  I  should  love  to  frequent  the  rooms  and 
haunts  where  our  love  grew  till  we  had  to 
give  up  to  it,  will,  heart  and  hand  —  for  in- 
stance, I  should  like  to  stand  where  I  used 
to  stand  of  mornings  and  watch  for  your 
little  crimson  coat  rising  over  the  hill  like  a 
star. 

More  than  ever  yours 

NEW  YORK 
20  JUNE 

My  sweet  bachelor 

How  shall  I  express  my  gratification  at 
your  good  fortune  —  first  in  getting  out  of 
that  old  Thinking-Shop,  and  next  in  doing 
it  so  gracefully? 

Oh,  if  I  could  have  been  there  to  kiss  those 
eloquent  lips  and  carry  off  as  a  sort  of  con- 
ductor the  surcharge  of  your  happy  enthu- 


LOVE-LIFE  69 

siasm!  All  I  could  do  was  to  take  account 
of  the  time  and  think  "  Now  Katherine  is 
waiting,"  and  "  Now  it  must  be  that  she  is 
speaking,"  and  "  Now  she  is  done  "  —  that 
was  after  twelve  o'clock  —  was  it  not?  — 
and  before  one?  I  was  happy  to  see  the 
newspaper's  report. 

Our  weather  is  delightful  and  since  my 
work  is  at  night  I  escape  the  days'  heat. 
How  magnificent  the  city  is  by  the  June 
moonlight !  —  after  the  streets  are  empty  and 
silent.  I  turn  homeward  just  before  'the 
sparrows  begin  to  twitter  from  houseledge 
and  tree.  The  Park  is  lovely  and  there  I 
sometimes  wander,  but  I  have  little  time  save 
for  newspapers  and  office-work. 

Elements  of  a  journalist  are  deeply  cov- 
ered up  in  me.  For  the  work  it  will  take  two 
or  three  years  to  get  my  forces  in  hand.  I 
write  on  all  sorts  of  topics,  with  no  care  nor 
elaboration  and  so  of  course  without  much 
effect.  The  indispensable  thing  is  rapid 
composition.  That  I  have  acquired.  Now 
comes  the  learning  to  write  well  as  well  as 


70  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

fast.     I  may  yet  find  it  more  congenial  to 
go  back  to  the  professor's  chair. 

I  must  close  —  but  not  without  wishing 
aloud  that  I  could  spend  an  hour  —  oh,  just 
one  hour,  what  would  it  not  be  worth!  — 
near  you  this  summer  weather. 

I  work  with  but  one  aim,  but  sometimes  it 
seems  like  the  stars  —  none  the  nearer  for  all 
my  climbing.  You  must  pour  out  the  let- 
ters, now  your  time  is  free.  They  must  not 
be  on  three  sides  of  a  tiny  sheet. 

Yours  eternally 

Thanks  for  the  roses!  Their  scent  en- 
tombs the  whole  glory  of  Class  Day,  and  has 
caught  a  memory  of  the  sweetest,  dearest,  oh, 
inexpressible  — 

NEW  YORK 
26  JUNE 

The  clock  just  struck  three,  and,  back 
from  work,  after  a  sponge  bath  and  early 
breakfast,  I  sit  down  to  answer  your  last 
dear  letter.  You  can  not  conceive  how  my 
heart  swells  with  love  and  gladness  at  this 


LOVE-LIFE  71 

priceless  evidence  of  your  love.     For  do  you 
not  say  "  Marry  me  "  ? 

It  more  than  heals  the  wound  of  the  Ad- 
ministrative Board's  action.  Loss  of  my 
chair  I  make  light  of.  The  insult  is  in  the 
manner.  My  proposition  left  them  free. 
They  could  have  given  me  option  of  return- 
ing at  a  reduced  salary,  or  of  resigning.  By 
their  summary  dismissal  they  have  injured 
my  professional  prospects.  A  professor's 
position  should  be  taken  from  him  only 
for  incompetency,  bad  conduct,  or  in 
case  of  financial  necessity.  But  of  this 
enough. 

All  commands  from  your  lips  are  sweet,  I 
say,  and  now  have  you  not  said  the  sweetest 
of  all?  Marry  you,  blessed  Katherine! 
You  know  that  nothing  but  poverty  delays 
that  happiest  day.  Until  I  have  an  income, 
how  can  I  take  you  to  be  my  wife  ? 

A  man  can  not  put  himself  in  a  position 
of  dependence  on  his  wife's  relatives.  The 
situation  of  Tantalus  would  be  easy  com- 
pared with  such  a  lot.     You  fear  the  effect 


72  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

of  business  worry  upon  my  character,  and 
perhaps  with  reason.  But  therefrom  come 
the  strength  and  calm  of  seasoned  expe- 
rience. 

Day  is  breaking  as  I  write,  and  dream 
here  of  you  and  shorten  my  hours  of  sleep. 
You  must  ever  believe,  my  Katherine,  that 
you  are  become  integral  part  of  my  nature. 
I  love  and  worship  you  all  the  more  for  your 
tender  boldness  in  pressing  upon  me  what 
alone  I  live  for  —  your  life  and  love  —  but 
you  must  see  that  unless  we  have  money  in 
our  pockets  we  must  bide  our  time.  Hope, 
sweet,  that  that  may  not  be  very  long  —  may 
be  next  September. 

You  turn  in  your  sleep,  perhaps,  while  I 
sign  the  name  of  your  most  devoted  thrall 

RONSBY 


NEW  YORK 
1   JULY 

Dearest  Katherine,  two  days  have  passed 
since  the  coming  of  your  double  letter,  your 
own  pulsing  words  of  aspiring  love  and  the 


LOVE-LIFE  73 

saucy  little  chatterbox  hid  under  its  gracious 
folds. 

The  rector  of  Saint  Infidelius  would  pull 
the  wings  of  the  Seraphim  from  before  their 
shaded  faces  —  in  the  very  presence  of  the 
Throne.  His  advice  is  well-meant  —  how 
could  it  be  anything  else  when  it  would 
hasten  the  happy  hour  for  which  I  toil  and 
wait?  —  but  for  that  very  reason  it  is  "  su- 
perfluous and  ridiculous  excess."  Your 
own  sweet  mandate  has  all  the  power  it  is 
possible  to  exercise  over  circumstances. 

Dear  heart,  your  letter  breathes  that  as- 
piring sentiment  which  makes  our  love  a  true 
worship.  To  be  constant,  tender,  passion- 
ate, is  not  enough  for  it.  My  heart  at  least, 
in  the  excess  of  these,  the  elements  of  love, 
feels  a  new  sense  born,  and  I  have  no  word 
for  it  but  worship. 

I  feel  somehow  that  the  Holy  Power  which 
sustains  and  moves  this  ancient  universe  of 
wonderful  and  beautiful  forms,  reveals  it- 
self to  me  as  Love  —  the  essence  of  my  own 
uncomprehended  life  in  your  sweet  spirit. 


74  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

To  love  you  and  serve  you  and  drink  from 
the  cup  of  your  tenderness,  and  to  sink  my 
life  in  the  Divine  Life  through  you,  seem  to 
me  the  supreme  end  of  my  existence.  Love 
is  a  cult  —  rightly  understood  —  and  our 
love  shall  be  our  religion,  shall  it  not?  To 
each  other  we  shall  reveal  only  the  divine 
attributes  of  tenderness  and  patience. 

The  account  given  out  of  the  Board's  vote 
against  me  was  false.  You,  darling,  must 
not  take  their  action  too  much  to  heart. 
Consider  what  a  prejudiced  set  of  men  such 
a  Board  may  be  —  at  times  laggards  in  the 
better  works  of  our  day,  blunted  in  percep- 
tion of  truth,  perhaps  dehumanized  in  sym- 
pathy. Better  behaviour  we  should  not  ex- 
pect. Before  now  vastly  more  learned  men 
than  I  have  lost  their  places  and  suffered 
persecution  at  the  hands  of  much  better  men 
than  they. 

I  have  ceased  to  regret  their  action  and 
turned  myself  to  succeed  at  my  new  work. 
Write  often,  Katherine  Another  time  a  bet- 
ter letter. 


LOVE-LIFE  75 

NEW  YORK 
6   JULY 

You  will  not  expect  deliberation,  dear 
Kate.  A  cool  place  is  not  within  reach. 
Since  your  letter  came  I  have  been  so  crazed 
with  noise  that  I  could  scarce  think  of  you, 
not  to  say  write  to  you. 

Gallius,  to  whom  I  sent  my  opinion  of 
the  action  of  the  Administrative  Board,  as- 
sures me  that  they  labored  under  misappre- 
hension of  my  wishes,  that  there  was  no  in- 
tention to  affect  me  injuriously.  I  say  in 
answer  that  it  is  still  in  their  power  to  re- 
verse what  they  did  and  make  good  an  unin- 
tentional injury,  and  I  await  their  action  be- 
fore forming  settled  judgment  as  to  motives. 
That  admits  no  evasion  of  responsibility. 

How  ill-fortuned  that  my  letters  to  you 
must  be  filled  with  business,  and  that,  too, 
of  no  agreeable  kind !  But  I  wish  to  let  you 
know  such  matters,  although  it  is  not  what 
men  commonly  talk  to  women.  A  man 
wishes  to  conceal  all  the  disagreeable  detail 
of  his  struggle  for  existence  from  the  woman 


76  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

he  loves.  Fruits  and  loveliness  alone  he 
wishes  to  lay  before  her.  But  unless  his 
advantages  enable  him  to  follow  his  devoted- 
ness  effectively,  attempt  is  sheer  folly. 

The  next  years  of  my  life  are  a  struggle 
with  fortune.  Anxiety  is  with  me  that  my 
exertions  may  not  be  sufficient  to  sustain  the 
home  upon  which  my  heart  is  set.  You 
stand  and  watch  my  battle  and  nerve  my 
hand,  but  the  sense  of  what  is  at  issue  almost 
unnerves  my  heart. 

If  only  I  had  been  trained  to  make  money 
instead  of  to  pursuits  which  are  not  paid! 
"Patience!  "  I  hear  you  say.  In  time  I 
shall  get  a  mastery  of  gain. 

On  The  Hustings  everybody  shirks  work 
in  this  heat.    '  I  have  to  write  the  leaders  now. 

For  the  good-night  kiss  you  sent,  I  wish 
I  could  give  you  a  thousand  by  daylight. 

Write  often,  Katherine,  and  love  me  ever. 


LOVE-LIFE  77 

NEW  YORK 
14  JULY 

Your  sick  letter  at  hand,  my  dearest,  the 
first  complaint  of  real  illness.  Oh,  how  I 
fear  those  visions  are  not  good. 

At  Herberg's  conduct  I  stand  appalled  — 
disparagement  of  me  as  a  scholar,  betrayal  of 
confidences  that  inflict  humiliation,  and  mon- 
strous falsehoods  which  he  has  coined  and 
spread  to  my  harm.  lago  is  outdone.  Not 
a  living  motive  in  the  heart  of  the  man  but 
cravings  for  praise. 

Among  other  abominations  he  has  a  tale 
about  my  injuring  a  young  lady  when  I  was 
at  the  University  of  Athens,  a  lady  of  good 
family  and  character,  an  acquaintance  of 
his  and  mine.  A  picture  which  I  left  with 
him  bears  her  striking  likeness  —  a  likeness 
we  both  remarked  one  day  before  I  left  Ash- 
burnham.  Well,  he  has  told  that  I  pur- 
chased the  picture  because  of  its  resemblance. 

This  is  a  specimen  of  his  lies,  and  from 
some  reference  in  a  letter  of  yours,  Kather- 
ine,  I  suspect  the  tale  reached  your  ears.     I 


78  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

asked  him  to  leave  the  picture  with  you  and 
he  wrote  that  you  did  not  seem  very  ready  to 
receive  it  and,  "  if  he  were  I,  he  would  not 
press  it." 

Katherine,  my  Light,  I  should  die  of  mis- 
ery and  disappointment  if  it  were  not  for  the 
absolute  confidence  I  rest  in  your  love.  One 
heart  beats  true  to  me,  and  is  such  refuge 
that  I  shall  never  again  need  to  trust  a  per- 
fidious soul.  You  have  my  life  in  your 
hand.  I  can  not  harbor, a  suspicion  of  your 
truth.  It  is  weary,  I  know,  loving  a  sick 
man  who  is  hundreds  of  miles  away.  But 
I  am  getting  stronger  —  and  shall  not  always 
be  far  away.     • 

Do  take  care  of  your  precious  health. 
Otherwise  I  must  be  your  nurse  —  and  all 
your  life.  You  don't  want  me  to  address 
myself  to  that  office,  do  you  ?  I  should  keep 
you  dependent,  I  fear,  in  order  to  wait  upon 
you. 

My  work  goes  forward  without  a  jar  and 
I  progress  in  the  difficult  art  of  writing  on 
current  topics  for  the  public. 


LOVE-LIFE  79 

Do  not  be  distressed  at  what  I  have  had  to 
tell  you  of  the  "  friend  "  who  supplanted  me 
in  the  University  post  he  undertook  to  guard 

Yours  world  without  end 


NEW  YORK 
18   JULY 

Your  letter  assures  me  of  your  convales- 
cence, Katherine.  May  these  lines  find  you 
as' wonted  —  sweet  and  strong  and  cheerful. 
You  are  a  blessing  to  all  near  you  —  a  darl- 
ing to  love  and  dote  on.  But  be  careful. 
Next  your  love  your  health  is  my  most  pre- 
cious possession. 

Of  the  late  perfidy  let  us  dismiss  every 
thought.  The  dishonor  will  devolve  where 
it  belongs.  There  is  a  world  outside  the 
antipathy  our  University  seems  to  harbor 
against  me,  and  somewhere  in  that  world  we 
shall  find  resting  place. 

The  next  few  months  must  reveal  our  fu- 
ture, at  least  a  green  glimpse  of  it,  a  future 
worth  living  for  I  think.  I  am  resolved 
never  to  give  another  mortal  my  confidence 


80  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

—  another  save  you  and  two  or  three  old, 
tried  friends.  Wise  is  he  who  trusts  and  de- 
pends on  no  one. 

My  heahh  improves  and  I  am  more  rugged 
than  for  a  long  time.  But  doubtless  I  am 
still  subject  to  relapse.  A  great  enjoyment 
comes  from  my  work,  or  rather  the  sense  of 
advancing  in  it  blesses  me.  Still  there  re- 
mains much  to  acquire  and  overcome,  but  if 
my  health  holds  and  your  love  abides  I  sharll 
conquer. 

Remember  me  to  the  dear  mother  of  vours. 


NEW  YORK 
29   JULY 

A  long  delay  you  will  think,  Katherine! 
And  what  can  be  the  reason?  I  have  been 
ill  over  a  week.  The  days  wear  away  and 
the  pain  grows  lighter,  but  still  it  persists 
and  culminates  once  or  twice  in  twenty-four 
hours. 

Every  day  I  have  dictated  an  article  or 
two  and  so  have  not  abandoned  my  post  of 
labor.     But  I  could  not  very  well  dictate  a 


LOVE-LIFE  81 

letter  to  you,  Light  of  my  life.  This  I  write 
propt  up  in  bed.  The  weather  changed  to 
wet  and  cool  and  that  accounts  for  the  long 
pain. 

You  will  be  sorry  to  get  this  letter,  Kath- 
erine,  and  you  will  feel  as  great  a  despair  as 
I  when  the  agony  seized  me  —  despair  lest 
I  may  never  realize  our  dream  of  love  and 
life.  I  seemed  especially  well  before  the  at- 
tack and  was  thinking  of  spending  my  two 
weeks  vacation  with  you  at  Ashburnham. 
My  heart  aches  when  I  remember  those  days 
of  last  fall.  But  I  shall  be  well  again,  and 
if  the  improvement  I  have  made  can  be  ren- 
dered permanent,  even  if  not  bettered,  I  shall 
be  content. 

Summer  will  soon  be  gone  and  autumn  I 
feel  must  bring  in  its  harvest  the  solution  of 
our  secret.  Your  noble  sweet  constancy 
has  earned  the  faithfullest  love  a  man  ever 
gave  a  woman,  and  if  that  will  be  reward, 
reward  you  shall  have.  Our  marriage  will 
be  what  few  marriages  are  —  a  perfect  union 
of  powers  and  desires.     We  —  you  and  I  — 


S2  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

take  the  same  earnest,  high  and  free  view  of 
life  and  we  shall  sustain  each  other  in  every 
aspiration. 

NEW  YORK 
8  AUGUST 

Kate  dearest 

The  last  illness,  from  which  I  was  not  re- 
covered when  I  wrote,  dragged  on.  Stormy 
weather,  not  yet  fairly  over,  distressed  and 
kept  me  from  rapid  convalescence.  Still,  as 
I  wrote  you,  I  was  able  to  contribute  a  fair 
share  of  editorials  to  The  Hustings. 

Rest  assured  that  I  am  well  cared  for,  not 
indeed  as  I  should  be  by  a  certain  sweet- 
lipped  girl  I  know,  but  as  well  as  humans 
can  be  expected  to  discharge  such  duties.  I 
may  never  be  free  from  such  attacks.  The 
utmost  I  hope  is  to  make  them  so  infrequent 
that  they  will  not  seriously  interfere  with 
my  work,  or  greatly  impair  my  strength.  If 
you  will  love  me,  Katherine,  I  fear  you  must 
make  up  your  mind  to  love  something  of  an 
invalid. 

In  about  ten  weeks  I  hope  to  see  you  —  in 


LOVE-LIFE  83 

the  very  tide  of  autumn.  A  few  days  with 
you  among  brown  fields  will  sink  in  poppied 
oblivion  the  long  pain  of  our  separation. 

We  shall  talk  the  great  question,  when  can 
we  make  our  home?  If  my  earnings  afford 
me  a  competence,  I  shall  not  wish  to  post- 
pone the  happy  day  by  one  revolution  of  the 
earth. 

We  shall  grow  together  in  our  work.  Life 
is  too  short  to  enable  a  poor  man  first  to 
spend  years  upon  his  culture  and  then  years 
in  accumulating  a  property  before  marriage 
—  if  he  marries  for  love,  that  is. 


NEW  YORK 
18  AUGUST 

Won't  you  leave  the  worship  of  Harpo- 
crates,  my  Light,  till  I  am  near  you,  and  in 
your  sweet  eyes  can  read  the  meaning  of  your 
golden  silence?  The  days  that  pass  beyond 
the  expected  date  of  your  dear  letter  have  a 
shadow  on  them,  and  the  mornings  that  do 
not  bring  your  looked-for  words  are  empty 
of  all  matutinal  freshness  and  splendor. 


84  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

It  seems  a  long  time  to  you  —  our  fifteen 
months  of  love  and  ten  months  of  separa- 
tion. Absence  makes  time  seem  long  that 
would  have  passed  like  a  bird  through  a  gar- 
den. You  can  not  know  how  sad  it  is  to 
think  that  I  am  the  cause  of  our  separation 

—  my  ills  and  incapacities.     I  fear  almost 
that  you  will  weary  of  loving  me. 

Then  indeed  I  should  despair  of  myself 
and  of  life.  I  always  have  thought  of  you 
as  a  queen  to  serve,  as  one  compelling  love 
and  making  the  terms  hard.  While  I  en- 
treat your  patience  I  have  no  right  to  speak 
of  patience  to  you. 

Dear  Katherine,  will  you  understand  these 
loose  words  ?  You  will  not  feel,  I  think,  the 
depth  of  passion  and  of  worship  which  surges 
under  their  salt  spray.     But,  yes  —  you  will 

—  you  must  know  better  than  all  things  else 
that  I  love  you  perfectly  and  utterly. 

My  health  is  good  again,  but  the  weather 
is  for  August  unprecedented  —  continuous 
rain. 

I  can  not  kiss  you,  nor  will  I  delegate  any- 


LOVE-LIFE  85 

one  to  do  so  but  the  bright  Apollo.  He  may 
kiss  you  brown  and  sweet  —  but  at  a  dis- 
tance. 

NEW  YORK 
28   AUGUST 

Your  short  notes  at  long  intervals  touch 
me,  darling  Katherine,  like  a  dying  sound 
further  and  further  withdrawing  from  my 
hearing.  True  they  still  whisper  the  en- 
chanting word  —  love,  but  I  almost  begin 
to  compute  the  time  when  they  shall  have 
vanished  utterly.  Illness  and  care  fill  your 
time,  you  say.  Alas!  that  you  should  not 
be  free  from  painful  solicitude  for  those  you 
love  both  near  and  far. 

My  health  continues  and  my  spirits  are  as 
buoyant  as  hard  work  and  little  news  from 
you  can  make  them.  I  dare  not  think  how 
happy  I  should  be  if  you  were  by  my  side  — 
here  at  work  with  me  —  without  almost  re- 
belling against  destiny.  How  hard  I  shall 
strive  to  make  our  income  equal  to  our  needs. 

At  the  office  I  have  not  yet  spoken  about 
advance  of  salary,  because  I  feel  my  efforts 


86  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

have  not  met  all  the  successes  which  would 
justify  it.  But  I  have  succeeded  in  gaining 
a  place  in  this  newspaper  writing  and  the 
confidence  of  our  manager.  He  expected  to 
raise  my  wage  provided  I  did  well,  and  I 
am  sure  he  will.  A  few  dollars  a  week  make 
all  the  difference  in  the  world  between  life's 
weary  monotony  and  its  supremest  vision. 

I  still  hope  to  keep  my  promise  and  see 
you  in  October.  It  may  be  that  we  can  re- 
turn together  —  that  is,  it  is  not  all  impos- 
sible. How  long  notice  would  you  have  to 
have,  sweet  Katherine? 

But  such  glories  depend  —  yes  —  on  fifty 
dollars  a  week.  Is  it  not  the  most  satanic 
thing  in  life  that  Love  must  be  a  pensioner 
of  Mammon  ?  Not  even  he  is  free.  But  he 
can  yearn,  and  dream,  and  weep,  and  hope 
without  money. 

To-day  is  my  twenty-sixth  birthday. 
How  gladly  would  I  take  the  stripes  from 
you! 


LOVE-LIFE  87 


NEW  YORK 
4  SEPTEMBER 


Your  letter  this  time  is  full  of  matter,  dear 
Katherine.  Besides  it  is  the  second  unan- 
swered and  so  I  feel  outnumbered  and  out- 
weighed. 

Your  father's  advice  about  remaining  in 
this  coast  region  I  fully  appreciate  and  shall 
act  upon.  This  however  not  on  account  of  a 
superior  moral  tone  of  affairs  here,  for  New 
York  is  ruled  and  robbed  by  as  vile  a  set  of 
men  as  exist  anywhere,  but  because  here  my 
knowledge  is  more  valuable  to  me  than  it 
would  be  elsewhere. 

We  have  to  come  to  it  in  the  end  and 
grasp  squarely  hold  of  the  pestilent  machine 
—  business.  Then,  in  the  keen  contest  for 
bread,  there  is  end  of  generous  aspirations 
for  the  race.  My  task  now  is  to  learn  to 
write  what  people  want  to  read  about  cur- 
rent affairs.  If  I  can  do  this,  I  shall  be 
tolerably  rewarded. 

To  anticipate  anything  would  be  ill- 
judged.     And  in  our  marriage  we  will  do 


88  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

nothing  contrary  to  your  parents'  wishes. 
You  must  be  free  to  act  without  trepidation 
and  uncertainty. 

You  do  not  give  me  quite  your  whole  con- 
fidence, Katherine.  You  hint  at  somewhat 
you  never  let  me  divine,  so  that  I  feel  an  un- 
settledness  too  vague  to  name,  too  impalpa- 
ble to  dispel.  Dearest,  the  world  has  neither 
my  confidence  nor  my  great  regard,  but  you 
I  both  love  and  trust.  I  never  thought  I 
deserved  your  love,  and  you  know  I  was  not 
insensible  to  the  great  responsibility  it 
brought.  Dear  heart,  always  be  frank  with 
me,  as  you  are  beloved  by  me. 


NEW  YORK 
11    SEPTEMBER 

My  Light 

I  can  not  wait  an  answer  to  my  last  un- 
kind letter,  but  beg  you  to  forgive  me  for  it 
before  your  lines  reach  me.  It  was  only  for 
a  moment  that  I  harbored  the  thought  that 
you  were  not  frank  with  me,  and  in  that  mo- 
ment I  wrote. 


LOVE-LIFE  89 

I  could  not  understand  the  frequent  al- 
lusions in  your  letters  to  somewhat  you  would 
tell  me  after  a  while,  except  as  evidence  of  a 
want  of  perfect  confidence.  But  when  I 
think  such  a  thought  of  you,  or  shadow  it  in 
my  letters,  I  am  stung  by  an  after-sense  of 
intolerable  remorse.  The  thought  that  I 
have  given  you  pain  makes  me  desperate. 
In  addition  to  all  the  sorrow  I  have  been 
obliged  to  be  to  you,  I  have  not  heart  to  add 
another  slightest  grief  for  any  cause. 

Forgive  my  letter,  or  send  it  back  to  me, 
won't  you?  How  wretchedly  weak  we  are! 
It  seems  to  me  that  nothing  could  ever  in- 
duce me  to  say  or  do  aught  painful  to  you 
—  and  yet  I  do.  But  you  must  know  how 
I  love  you  —  better  than  life  —  even  as  I  do 
divine  goodness  and  all  beauty. 

Soon  I  shall  be  in  Ashburnham,  and  then 
we  will  make  all  things  right  again.  I  sup- 
pose the  University  is  in  full  blast  with  the 
intellects  of  my  false  friends  roaring  in  the 
furnace. 

Here  prospects  move  happily.     I  am  en- 


90  LOVE-LIFE 

gaged  upon  an  investigation  of  our  municipal 
affairs  with  the  view  of  making  them  theme 
of  a  lively  discussion.  The  work  brings  me 
in  contact  with  many  unusual  characters  and 
men  of  strange  points  of  view. 

To-day  is  our  first  fall  day  —  clear,  cool, 
far-away.  I  feel  well  and  if  I  thought  you 
would  not  be  angry  with  me,  I  should  be  in 
good  spirits. 


Ill 

LETTERS  SENT  FROM 
NEW  YORK 


NEW  YORK 
29   SEPTEMBER 


Last  night,  dearest  Katherine,  I  got  back, 
safe  and  sound  after  a  disagreeable  journey. 
I  had  existed  in  the  vortex  of  a  cyclone  of 
dust,  cinders,  carbonic  acid  gas  and  iron 
filings  ever  since  I  waved  farewell  to  your 
sweet  face,  and  so  you  see  I  was  not  unpre- 
pared to  relish  the  luxury  of  city  air  and  the 
quiet  of  paved  streets. 

This  morning,  much  refreshed,  I  shall  go 
to  my  duties.  Already  I  feel  the  advantage 
of  this  climate  in  a  certain  sense  of  ease  and 
quiet  which  I  never  enjoy  in  the  dry,  electric 
clarity  of  Ashburnham. 

Your  letter  was  a  great  temptation  —  it 
had  awaited  my  hand  so  many  days !  But, 
after  kissing  it  and  holding  it  up  to  the  light 
in  vain  endeavor  to  read  its  message,  I  laid 
it  unopened  in  my  desk  as  I  promised.  Now 
here  I  give  you  warning  that  the  only  chance 
you  have  of  keeping  my  eyes  off  it  is  punctu- 
ally to  write  me  others. 

93 


94  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

Give  my  love  to  the  family,  and  do  you, 
Katherine,  do  your  best  to  break  the  habit  of 
melancholy  into  which  you  have  fallen.  If 
you  do  not,  I  shall  have  to  honey  you  out  of 
it. 

NEW  YORK 
8   OCTOBER 

The  best  news  I  can  send  you,  sweetest 
heart,  is  that  I  got  the  letter  —  full  of  your- 
self —  resolutions,  banter,  effervescence  and 
all.  The  next  best  is  that  I  am  still  enjoy- 
ing good  health. 

I  have  committed  our  secret  to  my  house- 
people  and  they  are  anxious  we  should  stay 
with  them  during  the  great  anniversary.  It 
is  going  to  be  difficult  to  find  comfortable 
quarters.  These  are  not  large  or  elegant, 
but  I  think  you  might  be  satisfied  for  im- 
mediate months  to  come.  Boarding  with 
the  family  we  should  not  need  more  than  two 
rooms.  Such  arrangement  would  settle  our 
domesticity  but  you,  Katherine,  must  tell  me 
if  you  have  objections  to  this  plan. 

Let  me  caution  you  not  to  overdo.     Your 


LOVE-LIFE  95 

strong  spirit  bears  you  too  far.  When  I 
make  the  great  journey  after  you  I  must  find 
you  no  shade  less  brown,  no  shade  less  sweet, 
with  the  same  curved  lip,  the  same  tangled, 
wind-blown  hair. 

Ah,  Katherine,  I  am  mad  for  a  girl's  grey 
eyes. 


NEW  YORK 
15  OCTOBER 


Light  of  my  life 

What  did  I  open  my  eyes  upon  this  morn- 
ing but  your  sweet  letter  —  lying  on  my  pil- 
low !  How  like  a  living  thing  the  tiny  billet 
seemed,  a  love-bird  weary  after  long  flight 
and  quietly  abiding  my  awakening ! 

The  world  is  growing  mysterious  to  me 
again  after  having  lost  most  of  its  deep  sig- 
nificance. The  immanence  of  a  great  pas- 
sion warms  the  blood  and  makes  spring  in 
the  imagination.  I  seem  to  live  two  lives  — 
one  of  the  dryest  and  hardest  realism,  my 
world  of  work;  the  other  of  mysterious  lights, 
and  sounds,  and  vast  and  beautiful  things, 


96  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

and  great  ardors  and  happy  hours  —  my 
world  of  reverie. 

I  am  glad  that  you  agree  with  me  about 
our  domestic  order.  It  would  be  ill-advised 
for  us  to  undertake  to  settle  ourselves  at  once. 
Let  us  be  together  when  we  plan  and  choose 
our  neighborhood.  The  rooms  here  are  to 
be  furnished  anew  for  your  coming,  but  since 
the  house  will  not  permit,  I  can  not  give  them 
just  the  look  I  want. 

We  shall  be  married  —  te  volente  —  in 
February.  In  February,  oh  Katherine,  if 
God  grants  my  supreme  desire,  I  shall  have 
you  here  with  me  —  here,  oh  Light,  with  me. 
Time  passes  on  leaden  wings  and  it  really 
seems  six  months  since  I  kissed  the  blossom 
mouth  and  dainty  chin. 

My  health  holds  good,  although  I  suffer 
constantly  from  colds.  Let  us  hope  that  the 
nursing  you  say  you  have  in  hand  I  shall 
not  need.  I  undertake  that  you  shall  have 
all  you  can  attend  to  in  caring  for  my  well 
hours. 

Our  friend,  the  professor,  could  hardly 


LOVE-LIFE  97 

deglutinate  the  evangelicism  of  the  secta- 
rian institution  you  name. 

That  popular  work,  "  Force  and  Matter," 
is  in  many  respects  a  shallow  thing. 

Write  to  me  often,  and  love  me  always, 
always,  always  — 

NEW    YORK 
24  OCTOBER 

Dear  heart 

As  the  days  pass  that  bring  us  nearer  our 
new  life,  the  whole  significance  of  the  change 
it  implies  dawns  ever  higher  upon  me.  I 
have  lived  on  letters  and  dreams  so  long, 
with  one  luminous  fortnight  only  of  your 
presence,  that  I  almost  fear  the  rising  sun  of 
Love  that  reddens  the  horizon. 

How  can  I  realize  it !  There  seems  to  me 
to  be  a  life's  happiness  in  every  one  of  the 
many  phases  of  our  love-life  which  I  fore- 
dream  in  all  its  heights  and  depths  of  joy  and 
labor.  You  say  it  takes  a  wonderful  deal  of 
patience  to  make  a  woman.  Do  you  think  a 
man's  life  meets  with  less  obdurate  barriers? 

We  shall  care  little  for  the  ceremony  which 


98  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

joins  us  before  men.  But  there  is  a  sacra- 
ment of  marriage  which  I  hope  we  shall  re- 
peat in  our  hearts,  and  it  tells  us  with  more 
severity  than  the  formulas  of  the  church  that 
marriage  is  a  state  of  cares  and  toils  which 
love  must  make  sweet,  that  indeed  its  great- 
est glory  is  its  duty  —  that  if  it  were  relieved 
of  its  burdens  it  would  be  robbed  of  its  sanc- 
tity and  deepest  joys.  They  do  not  love  who 
find  love's  sacrifices  irksome. 

But  you  will  think  I  design  a  lecture  when 
I  merely  mean  to  echo  the  sentiment  of  your 
dear  letter,  which  is  as  full  as  your  tender 
heart  of  love's  earnest  purpose. 

Through  you  I  seem  to  get  a  glimpse  and 
breath  of  your  golden  and  purple  October. 
Revel  in  it,  sweet,  and  drink  the  wine  of 
health  shed  out  of  its  lustrous  skies.  You 
make  the  whole  bright  west  fairer  when  I 
think  its  light  and  air  bathe  your  form. 

In  New  York  we  have  less  of  the  poetry  of 
autumn  and  more  of  its  material  beneficence, 
for  it  makes  redder  cheeks  and  keener  ap- 
petites than  in  Hesperia.     You  will   grow 


LOVE-LIFE  99 

stouter  here,  my  slender  Katherine.     I  hope 
I  shall  continue  to  deserve  your  esteem. 

February  then  is  the  month  blessed  above 
all  others  —  which  is  to  give  me  your  daily 
companionship.  That  ought  to  compensate 
for  its  short  calendar. 

My    health    is    still    unbroken  —  favete 
Unguis  —  and  my  love  reaches  through  this 
letter  and  your  hands  to  your  household,  and 
especially  to  my  new  papa  and  mama. 
Katherine's  lover, 

RONSBY 


NEW  YORK 
2    NOVEMBER 

I  snatch  an  interval  of  leisure  on  this  eve- 
ning of  election-returns  —  while  everything 
about  me  is  in  a  whirl  of  excitement  —  to 
write  you,  sweet,  not  a  lecture  for  your  sad- 
hearted  letter,  but  if  possible  a  word  of  cheer. 
It  will  be  hard  to  send  sunshine  and  breezes 
to  your  soul,  when  I  could  not,  with  all  my 
kisses  and  chiding  and  chatter,  keep  you 
from  drooping  while  I  was  there. 


100  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

What  terrible  foreboding  oppresses  your 
soul?  I  can  not  divine  it.  It  seems  some 
terrible  premonition.  You  say  you  were  not 
born  for  happiness.  Oh,  how  you  make  my 
heart  ache  with  such  cruel  forecast! 

If  it  be  as  to  long  life,  none  know  the  will 
of  fate.  Feebleness  or  uncertain  health  at 
your  age  is  no  evidence  either  of  future  ill- 
health  or  of  brief  life.  But  why  trouble  our- 
selves about  what  we  should  await  with 
cheerful  acquiescence  in  the  great  and  rev- 
erend order  of  the  world ! 

You  must  be  happy.  The  decree  has  gone 
forth.  It  is  my  life's  work,  and  failure  in  it 
I  can  not  brook.  If  I  can  not  make  you 
happy  and  contented,  I  had  better  never  been 
born.  You  have  said  you  do  not  care  for 
wealth,  and  whatever  else  you  demand  I  un- 
dertake to  procure  you. 

Do  you  not  know  our  life  will  be  one  long 
sweet  dream  and  worship  of  love  ?  —  and  can 
you  be  sad-hearted  when  its  dawn  is  but  three 
short  months  away? 

Dear  heart,  you  have  not  ice-water  for 


LOVE-LIFE  101 

blood  in  your  veins,  and  you  should  let  all 
the  old  sad  leavings  of  memory  consume  in 
the  divine  flame  of  a  new  life  and  a  real 
passion.  I  shall  be  busied  for  many  years 
in  studying  out  ways  to  love  you,  and  all  my 
other  years  in  repeating  for  mingled  love's 
and  memory's  sake  my  old  joys.  You  must 
not  be  sad,  sweetheart,  and  all  aweary  of  ex- 
istence with  the  warm  heaven  of  love  im- 
pending over  you.  It  is  wicked,  do  you 
know  ? 

This  letter  I  fear  will  not  cheer  you.  If 
it  is  confused,  lay  it  to  the  uproar  in  the 
street  —  a  great  political  victory. 

I  am  not  feeling  in  best  trim,  but  still  I 
am  not  ill.  Doubtless  you  are  well  by  this 
and  ought  to  have  written  and  dispatched  a 
second  letter. 

AH  my  love  to  you. 


NEW   YORK 
9  NOVEMBER 

If  my  letters  are  short,  Katherine,  yours 
are  not  long,  and  yet  you  have  the  more  time. 


10-2  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

Somehow  I  find  it  unaccountably  difficult  to 
write  you  long  letters.  In  the  first  place 
there  is  no  little  gossip  from  New  York,  for 
we  have  so  small  acquaintance. 

Then  again  it  is  always  a  lamentable  fail- 
ure when  I  endeavor  to  put  in  words  what  I 
feel  toward  you.  It  is  something  so  mys- 
terious and  gigantic,  a  great,  dim,  choking 
emotion  that  will  not  unfold  in  speech  or 
song. 

So  it  comes  that  my  only  resort  —  that  a 
most  unfortunate  and  poor  one  —  is  to  lec- 
ture you,  as  you  call  it.  Now  and  forever 
more  I  abandon  the  resource  —  when  I  find 
it  one  on  which  you  can  make  so  much  better 
draughts  than  I.  Your  first  essay  has  been 
so  successful  that  it  has  effectively  dis- 
couraged me  for  the  future. 

But  I  must  oft'er  what  reason  I  can  for 
my  writing  the  letter  to  Witley.  You  saw  it 
of  course  and  will  therefore  be  able  to  judge 
of  the  value  of  my  plea. 

You  know  I  have  no  confidence  in  or  re- 
spect for  the  moral  character  of  the  man  and 


LOVE-LIFE  103 

could  not  therefore  dream  of  making  him  a 
confidential  friend.  He  has,  however,  been 
so  persistently  kind  to  me,  and  seemed  to 
build  so  much  upon  my  good  opinion,  and 
besides  wrote  me  so  ardent  and  eloquent  a 
letter,  that  I  could  not  find  it  in  my  heart  to 
answer  in  terms  not  somewhat  touched  with 
warmth.  But  I  was  careful  to  express  only 
that  enthusiasm  for  humanity  which  is  nat- 
ural with  me,  and  goes  out  to  every  one  who 
appeals  to  it  —  without  meaning  to  establish 
relations  of  personal  confidence.  Doubtless 
he  understood  me  in  a  personal  sense.  I 
wished  also  to  benefit  him  by  pointing  out 
that  the  only  foundation  of  friendship  which 
I  recognize  is  that  of  personal  honor  and  de- 
votion to  great  and  worthy  aims.  I  overdid 
the  matter  and  felt  that  I  had  before  your 
letter  brought  it  home  to  me  with  so  much 
force. 

Your  task,  Kate  dearest,  shall  not  be  as 
hard  a  one  as  that  of  many  wives  in  breaking 
off  their  husbands'  old  enthusiasms.  This 
one  is  not  real,  you  see,  and  there  are  only 


104  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

one  or  two  that  would  really  -cost  me  to  give 
up. 

What  you  anticipate  will  surely  be.  Feb- 
ruary will  see  the  dawn  of  our  new  life  — 
whose  glorious  beauty  and  sweet  hours  are 
of  our  own  creating,  built  of  the  light  and 
heat  of  our  souls  alone.  I  am  recovering 
slowly  from  a  very  bad  cough  and  have  had 
no  prostration  from  pain. 

Your  far-too-emotional  Ronsby 


NEW  YORK 
18  NOVEMBER 

Dearest 

Your  good-natured  letter  found  me  in  bed 
as  usual,  but  this  time  with  no  intention  of 
at  once  getting  up.  A  badly  sprained  ankle 
will  keep  me  housed  for  several  days.  Com- 
ing out  of  The  Hustings  building  last  night 
I  stepped  not  quite  clear  of  the  last  step  — 
which  I  meant  to  skip  —  and  so  doubled  up 
my  ankle.  Well,  I  am  endeavoring  to  take 
it  philosophically. 

Now,  Katherine  darling,  do  you  fancy  you 


LOVE-LIFE  105 

can  draw  me  into  a  lecture?  Not  a  bit.  It 
is  really  your  prerogative  anyway,  and  I 
never  should  have  invaded  it.  I  can  not 
find  half  as  good  cause  as  you  can,  nor  lec- 
ture half  as  well.  I  purpose  to  rely  alto- 
gether on  cozening  and  finesse  for  accom- 
plishing what  infrequent  aims  I  may  have. 
Do  you  take  warning. 

But  in  all  seriousness,  sweet,  your  penulti- 
mate letter  was  excellent  and  deserves  to  be 
acted  upon  by  me.  I  have  suffered  a  great 
deal  from  the  rudeness,  ingratitude,  duplicity 
and  insensibility  of  those  I  have  trusted  and 
loved,  and  I  have  made  resolutions  before 
now  to  forswear  everything  of  the  name  of 
friendship. 

Such  is  the  selfishness  and  insincerity  of 
men  individually,  and  such  the  monstrous 
injustice  of  social  and  business  relations, 
that  it  is  impossible  for  a  man  of  simple, 
strong  feelings  to  avoid  the  utmost  wretched- 
ness, if  he  interests  himself  deeply  either  in 
individuals  or  in  public  and  general  affairs. 
I  have  the  impulses  and  the  intellectual  con- 


106  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

stitution  of  the  old-time  socialist,  but  my  ex- 
periences of  social  and  political  conditions 
make  me  despair.  It  is  intolerable.  I  can 
not  endure  the  constant  sense  of  the  great  gap 
between  what  is  and  what  ought  to  be  —  yes, 
and  what  might  be  if  the  twentieth  part  of 
men's  professions  were  realized  in  their 
lives. 

There  is  only  one  refuge,  that  is  to  the 
world  of  art,  science,  learning  and  nature. 
I  will  take  from  social  relations  the  best,  and 
in  my  sheltered  kingdom  of  the  ideal  and 
impersonal  build  the  bower  of  Love  —  the 
only  guest  worthy  of  admittance. 

But  as  I  have  to  achieve  this  seclusion 
while  laboring  in  the  very  focus  of  the  social 
and  political  contest,  you  see  the  task  is  no 
light  one.  I  must  study  carefully  all  con- 
flicting interests  and  ideas  and  champion 
certain  of  them.  Yet  I  must  not  allow  them 
really  to  involve  my  sympathies;  and  the 
only  way  to  do  this  is  to  keep  ever  before  my 
eyes  the  Gorgon  thought  that  to  all  this 
savage  struggle  there  is  little  outcome  of 


LOVE-LIFE  107 

good  to  the  persons  engaged.  Unutterable 
poverty  —  I  fear  —  will  ever  be  the  lot  of 
the  millions,  dishonest  gains  and  arrogance 
the  preeminence  of  the  few. 

Still  there  are  Homer  and  Plato,  Beethoven 
and  Shakespeare,  and  Goethe,  others  too 
many  to  name,  and  all  nature,  and  you. 
Yes,  in  you,  Katherine,  I  shall  find  all  the 
human  sympathy  I  need,  and  it  will  be  of  the 
purest,  deepest  and  most  precious  kind. 
The  one  or  two  friends  of  whom  I  spoke  are 
bachelors,  whom  I  know  to  be  honest  and 
kind,  and  nothing  could  be  more  unobtrusive 
than  their  friendship. 

Sweetheart,  do  you  know  you  ought  not 
—  but  that  is  the  opening  of  a  lecture.  I 
mean  I  am  not  making  sacrifices  for  you, 
Katherine  and  it  pains  me  to  have  you  speak 
in  that  way  of  what  I  am  trying  to  do.  I 
would  make  sacrifices  for  you  —  any  sacri- 
fice. But  to  make  you  mine  is  not  to  make 
a  sacrifice  for  you,  that  is  in  the  dativus  corn- 
modi,  but  for  you  —  to  get  you,  that  is.  I 
can  not  make  sacrifices.     I  can  not  offer  a 


108  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

thousandth   part   of   what   you   are   worth. 

Will  your  wedding  cost  you  as  much  pains 
as  Meg's  costs  her?  I  had  much  rather 
have  you  alive  without  a  trousseau. 

The  rector  of  Saint  Infidelius  is  still,  I 
see,  worrying  with  the  orthodox.  He  has 
himself  gone  on  from  faith  in  a  personal 
deity  to  pure  pantheism.  Personal  immor- 
tality will  go  next.  What  an  idle  business, 
preaching  the  religion  of  Spinoza  to  people 
who  have  never  understood  the  decalogue! 
And  then  it  is  not  Spinoza  who  preaches 
either. 

Ever  and  ardently  your 

RONSBY 


NEW   YORK 
27  NOVEMBER 

Shall  I  ever,  my  Katherine,  be  past  the 
necessity  of  sending  you  bad  news!  One 
evil  no  sooner  laid  than  another  is  at  hand. 
This  time  a  severe  cold  has  made  me  an  in- 
valid. All  the  fall  I  have  suffered  from  a 
stubborn  cough.     Last  week  it  got  worse  and 


LOVE-LIFE  109 

I  had  a  high  fever.  The  affection  seems  to 
be  chiefly  bronchial,  but  there  is  danger  of 
serious  issue.  I  am  taking  best  care  of  my- 
self. 

Now,  dearest,  we  can  only  be  patient. 
The  old  difficulty  I  have  pretty  well  mas- 
tered. Doubtless  I  shall  conquer  my  new 
enemy.  My  present  anxiety  is  to  be  well-rid 
of  it  before  February  comes  with  its  golden 
snows,  luxurious  rains,  cheerful  sleet  and 
dreamy  breezes. 

Your  dear  letter  I  have  read  and  all  its 
inner  sense  deeply  pondered.  I  see  you  have 
been  a  little  hurt  by  some  things  or  ways  I 
wrote  —  more  for  idle  banter  than  aught 
else.  Believe  me,  Katherine,  I  received  your 
faithful  and  wise  reproof  with  the  reverence 
and  love  with  which  I  am  sure  you  gave  it. 
A  noble  woman  is  made  "  to  comfort  and 
command,"  and  I  am  sorry  for  any  irritation 
I  showed.  Really  it  was  more  in  jest  than 
earnest. 

But  I  do  not  agree  with  you  that  this 
"  first  lesson  "  in  our  life  service  should  be 


110  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

the  last.  What  is  needful  is  not  that  we 
should  learn  to  excuse  or  overlook  fault  in 
each  other,  but  that  we  should  have  perfect 
confidence  in  the  sweet  and  faithful  spirit  in 
which  advice  is  given.  Only  let  our  reproof 
never  be  animated  by  a  spirit  of  self-asser- 
tion, or  domineering,  or  fretful  fault-finding 
or  of  anything  even  more  unkind  than  these. 
But  always  let  it  be  as  true  and  gentle  and 
patient  as  love  itself,  and  we  shall  both  profit 
by  each  other's  judgment  and  observation. 
We  should  not  exert  ourselves  to  repress  our 
advice,  but  to  make  it  worthy  of  the  dear  and 
sacred  relation  which  we  sustain. 

Already  we  have  begun  preparations  for 
your  coming.  That  is,  we  have  chosen  pa- 
per and  are  having  it  put  on  the  rooms.  To 
look  at  it  does  me  great  good  —  it  has  an  air 
of  "  for  sure  "  about  it,  and  is  a  trifling,  ma- 
terial evidence  that  Katherine  is  coming  and 
the  dull  days  to  that  sunrise  are  not  many 
after  all. 

Do  you  ever  stroll  nowadays  through  the 
woods  and  country  lanes  we  know  so  well? 


LOVE-LIFE  111 

What  shall  you  do  when  you  come  to  New 
York  for  all  your  old  country  liberty?  Here 
you  can  go  nowhere  without  the  cars,  and 
must  ride  for  an  hour  to  get  out  of  town. 
You  will  have  little  of  social  life,  for  nothing 
is  of  much  weight  here  but  immense  wealth. 
A  literary  and  artist  class  there  hardly  seems 
to  be,  at  least  the  elements  of  such  a  class  are 
not  organized.  Snobbery  and  pretence  rule 
supreme  —  and  some  of  the  writers  and 
artists  cravenly  train  with  it  and  get  down  in 
the  dust  to  meet  it. 

But  I  have  no  serious  apprehensions  that 
we  shall  find  the  time  drag.  Certainly  I 
shall  not:  I  never  do  anyway,  and  with 
Katherine  I  could  live  the  ages  of  Brahm 
and  in  Brahm's  seclusion. 

But  what  has  put  it  in  your  head,  sweet- 
heart, that  you  must  not  write  to  me  about 
yourself?  Why  there  is  nothing  else  I  care 
a  fig  about.  If  you  could  photograph  your 
every  movement,  and  record  your  every  word 
for  an  hour,  it  would  make  a  letter  I  should 
study  with  all  my  eyes  and  all  my  heart. 


112  LOVE-LIFE 

It  is  past  sunset,  but  the  sun  is  still  shin- 
ing upon  you,  my  Light.  At  this  moment 
you  may  be  thinking  of 

Your  ever  faithful 

RONSBY 


IV 

LETTERS  SENT  FROM 
NEW  YORK 


NEW  YORK 
9    JANUARY 

You  want  to  hear  from  me,  dear  Katherine, 
instead  of  from  the  nurse.  I  am  very  weak. 
It  is  great  effort  to  write,  but  for  you  I  make 
it. 

We  are  waiting  —  after  long  weeks  of 
pneumonia  —  to  see  whether  a  solidified  lung 
makes  a  favorable  termination,  or  whether  it 
will  do  the  reverse. 

Have  patience,  darling,  whatever  happens. 
I  have  the  best  of  care. 

Yours  forever 

RONSBY 


NEW  YORK 
14  JANUARY 

Since  I  wrote  you  last,  Katherine  —  I  re- 
member the  few  dismal  lines  —  I  have 
gained  in  strength.  Signs  are  good,  but  it 
is  not  yet  certain  the  termination  will  be 
favorable. 

What  is  certain  is  that  in  any  event  my 

IIS 


116  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

convalescence  will  be  long  and  tedious. 
This  week  closes  my  connection  with  The 
Hustings.  Friends  have  held  my  place  for 
me  to  this  time.  But  I  can  not  impose  fur- 
ther on  their  goodness. 

Well  —  there  is  nothing  for  it  but  a  new 
start  in  the  world  under  less  favorable  cir- 
cumstances than  before.  For  now  my 
health  stands  in  the  way  that  was  open  to  me. 
What  I  shall  do  I  can  not  decide.  But  for 
one  reason  it  would  not  be  of  the  remotest  im- 
portance to  my  feelings. 

You  know  what  makes  the  future  full  of 
solicitude  to  me.  At  times  it  seems  to  me  to 
have  been  a  criminal  act  by  which  I  linked 
another's  happiness  to  the  unsettled  and  un- 
sound body  of  my  fortune.  I  had  nothing, 
not  even  health,  and  yet  I  dared  to  ask  for 
your  love.  It  is  impossible  for  me  to  rid 
myself  of  the  idea  that  I  have  done  you  and 
yours  a  great  wrong.  All  our  happy  plans 
are  once  more  dissipated,  and  the  future 
again  opens  up  a  boundless  waste  with  no 
blossom  in  sight. 


LOVE-LIFE  117 

Have  you  patience,  dear?  I  could  not 
blame  you  if  you  had  not.  But  if  you  have, 
and  will  still  wander  with  me,  hoping  some- 
where and  sometime  to  join  the  aching  cur- 
rent of  our  lives  in  one  full  stream  of  love  — 
if  you  have,  my  heart  shall  never  swerve 
from  its  one  desire,  and  my  labor  shall  be  to 
compass  it. 

All  this  may  be  premature,  for  my  life  is 
not  yet  secure.  Do  not  be  over-anxious, 
Katherine,  on  my  account.  You  know  your 
presence  would  be  inexpressibly  delightful 
to  me,  but  you  could  not  nurse  me  as  you 
think,  and  then  there  is  much  that  would 
embarrass  you  here.  My  care  is  of  the  best. 
Do  you  only  write  frequently.  But  utter 
your  whole  heart. 

Yours,  yours,  yours 


NEW  YORK 
19   JANUARY 

My  own  Katherine 

You  can  not  imagine  with  what  pleasure 
I  read  your  letter  of  the  13th  written  on  re- 


118  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

ceiving  my  first  note.  I  have  sent  you  a  full 
sheet  since,  but  it  fell  between. 

My  heart  is  glad  that  you  can  take  so 
reasonable  and  patient  a  view  of  our  circum- 
stances, which  are  in  themselves  distressing 
enough  without  being  made  more  so  by  an 
impractical  and  impatient  temper.  Heaven 
knows  I  am  both  impractical  and  impatient ; 
but  I  endeavor  to  simulate  prudence,  and 
patience,  and  especially  I  rejoice  when  I  get 
outside  assistance. 

You  know  I  have  little  or  no  hope  —  it  is 
not  an  element  of  strength  with  me  —  but  I 
cultivate  self-renunciation.  Still  I  can  not 
relinquish  the  dream  we  dreamt  two  years 
next  May.  It  stands  to  me  for  life.  It  is 
all  life  means  to  me.  In  the  prostration  and 
weakness  of  my  present  condition  it  is  diffi- 
cult to  realize  that  I  ever  may  be  strong  and 
sound  again,  but  others  have  recovered  and 
my  case  is  promising  well  according  to  my 
doctor's  opinion.  I  am  constantly  gaining 
strength. 

I  write  these  lines  sitting  in  a  great  leather 


LOVE-LIFE  119 

chair,  propt  and  blanketed.  I  sit  up  a 
couple  of  hours  a  day,  read  considerable 
light  matter,  have  a  chat  with  our  academic 
friend  and  write  to  you  and  mother. 

I  am  glad  to  hear  Meg's  husband  is  bet- 
ter. What  ails  us  wretched  men  of  to-day 
that  we  have  so  little  health  ?  It  is  a  shame 
for  us  to  marry,  and  a  wonder  that  anybody 
will  have  us,  especially  the  nicest  girls  in  the 
world.  There  are  a  few  sound  men  yet. 
They  ought  to  be -at  a  towering  premium. 
Caeciis  Amor!  My  love  to  the  family;  a 
*  thousand  kisses  for  you. 

NEW  YORK 
31    JANUARY 

By  the  time  you  receive  these  lines  your 
patience  will  be  worn  very  thin,  I  fear. 
There  is  not  only  the  long  interval  of  your 
own  making  which  you  have  had  to  wait  out, 
but  also  several  days  of  my  proper  neglect. 

You  will  forgive  me,  however,  when  you 
hear  that  I  have  been  so  busy  all  this  time 
gaining  strength  that  I  think  I  ought  to  be 
forgiven.     After  all  I  have  not  gained  a  very 


120  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

great  deal.  When  I  shall  be  quite  well  is 
a  question.  I  make  it  out  sometime  next 
summer  —  that  is  if  I  get  well  at  all. 

Now,  dearest  girl,  what  a  queer  little  head 
that  is  of  yours!  It  makes  up  its  heroic 
mind  to  be  patient  and  brave  under  painful 
circumstances,  but  the  result  of  the  effort  is 
only  to  create  a  greater  restlessness  and 
brooding  in  another  quarter.  Home  "  that 
has  not  for  long  been  so  quiet  and  restful  " 
becomes  an  intolerable  confinement,  and  my 
Katherine  longs  to  strike  out  into  the  wide 
world  and  do  something  for  its  good.  She 
asks  if  I  know  any  opening. 

Of  course  manual  employments  are  out  of 
the  question  for  my  delicately  bred  girl. 
The  professions  are  virtually  closed  against 
women  —  that  is  women  can  not  yet  move  in 
them  with  the  freedom  of  a  member  in  good 
standing.  Then  moreover  my  sweet  Kath- 
erine has  no  profession.  She  could  hardly 
take  to  the  Bohemian  existence  of  certain 
ladies  of  the  press  I  know.  There  remains 
the  art  pedagogic;  but  she  would  learn  little 


LOVE-LIFE  121 

teaching  school  and  not  see  the  world  on  very 
unfamiliar  sides. 

Now,  my  Light,  what  shall  I  advise?  I 
am  conscious  that  this  discontent  is  the 
fruit  of  disappointments  which  I  feel  more 
keenly  than  you  because,  if  for  no  other  rea- 
son, I  am  their  cause. 

If  you  wish  to  fit  yourself  —  in  case  of 
necessity  —  to  earn  your  own  support,  you 
should  best  devote  yourself  to  some  specialty 
of  letters,  or  science,  while  you  have  time  at 
your  disposal.  But  I  forbear  for  obvious 
reasons  for  further  advice  on  this  subject. 

Give  my  love  and  felicitations  to  the 
vc6wfx(f)ot.  To  you,  my  Katherine,  I  can 
not  send  love  for  you  already  have  my  whole 
heart  in  your  keeping. 


NEW   YORK 
7    FEBRUARY 

You  will  excuse  the  delay  and  the  brevity 
of  this  note,  dearest,  when  I  tell  you  that  for 
the  last  four  days  I  have  been  suffering  from 
the  discontinuance  of  anodynes,  and  have 


122  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

slept  little.     Otherwise,  the  doctor  says,  I 
have  gained. 

Your  last  dear  letter  deserves  a  better  an- 
swer and  shall  have  it  sometime,  let  us  hope, 
in  that  future  where  we  are  obliged  to  locate 
so  much  of  our  happiness.  I  have  to-night 
no  mind  for  any  of  the  items  that  make  up  a 
letter.  I  only  know  and  feel  in  undimin- 
ished distinctness  how  great  and  true  my  love 
is  and  how  wholly  it  involves  me  whether  I 
live  or  die.     After  all  that  is  all. 


NEW   YORK 
12   FEBRUARY 

Another  long  delay,  Katherine,  but  if  you 
knew  how  hard  it  is  in  this  weariness  and 
unchanging  condition  to  get  about  a  letter, 
you  would  rather  wonder  that  I  write  at  all 
than  that  I  am  not  prompt.  I  grow  better, 
the  doctor  says,  but  I  hardly  realize  it.  I 
still  suffer  and  am  oh,  so  weary  of  my  room 
and  bed! 

To  say  that  I  am  lonesome  would  faintly 
express  my  sense  of  utter  desolation.     It  is 


LOVE-LIFE  123 

no  longer  an  acute  sense,  but  a  sort  of  at- 
mosphere I  breathe  and  absorb  —  that  has 
wrought  my  whole  being  to  its  tone  and  na- 
ture. 

My  resolution  is  taken  to  go  home  to  Cath- 
ness  —  but  that  may  not  be  for  months.  I 
must  make  a  long  pause  and  take  a  new 
start  in  the  world  on  another  plane  of  ex- 
perience and  purpose,  if  I  am  ever  again  to 
meet  life's  duties. 

This  terrible  affliction  may  not  be  without 
its  fruits  to  me,  for  certainly  I  had  needed  a 
calmer  and  less  obscure  purpose.  Not  to  be 
ever  striving  after  the  unattainable,  but  to 
gauge  our  tasks  to  our  forces  is  indispensa- 
ble to  the  conduct  of  life. 

I  know  that  we  shall  both  grow  in  that 
serene  wisdom  which  is  the  fruit  of  self- 
limitation.  We  long  to  be  together  and  to 
enjoy  the  bliss  of  perfect  companionship,  but 
we  should  not  be  utterly  cast  down  because 
we  are  debarred  from  paradise  for  a  time, 
and  a  time,  too,  in  which  we  can  do  much  to 
ensure  the  permanence  and  depth  of  our  hap- 


124  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

piness  whenever  we  are  once  admitted.  We 
can  come  to  realize,  ever  more  clearly 
through  our  trial,  that  our  love  is  a  perfect, 
pure  and  exhaustless  spring  in  w^hose  abun- 
dance we  can  securely  trust. 

This  prosy  letter  has  not  at  all  expressed 
my  meaning  and  I  do  not  feel  strength 
enough  to  write  another  and  a  better.  Be- 
lieve me 

Ever  your  own  altogether 


NEW  YORK 
15  FEBRUARY 

Your  letters  get  better  and  mine  w^orse, 
dearest.  The  last  of  yours  was  very  full  of 
you.  But  I  write  with  so  much  difficulty, 
and  under  such  a  weight  of  unhappy  cir- 
cumstances, that  I  think  for  all  the  comfort 
my  letters  can  bring  you  they  might  be  writ- 
ten by  an  acquaintance.  But  that  acquaint- 
ance would  have  to  have  more  discretion  than 
one  good  friend  of  mine. 

Indeed,  dear  Katherine,  I  have  written  you 
the  worst  account  of  mvself.     I  have  all 


LOVE-LIFE  125 

along  feared  that  a  consumption  might  es- 
tablish itself,  which  would  make  way  with 
me  altogether.  But  the  doctor  is  now  san- 
guine. 

I  do  not  wish  to  inspire  you  with  any 
delusive  hope.  Although  I  gain  strength 
constantly,  I  am  harassed  by  a  cough  which 
may  mean  bad  for  me.  Do  not  think  I 
would  deceive  you  for  one  moment.  I  hope 
a  short  time  will  decide  definitely  my  situa- 
tion and  prospect  of  health  —  for  everything 
depends  on  that.  My  present  state  is  inex- 
pressibly painful. 

I  note  your  transmission  of  the  rector's 
message  about  "  grit."  Dear,  it  is  not  a 
question  of  grit.  I  can  not  and  will  not 
marry  as  a  sick  man,  and  if  I  am  well  I 
will  conspire  against  destiny  to  achieve  the 
happiness  which  only  your  love  can  confer. 
I  believe  that  you  appreciate  the  reasons 
which  inspire  my  resolution.  I  know  that 
you  are  more  anxious  for  my  happiness  than 
your  own  in  all  you  think  or  do. 


126  THE  PROFESSOR'S 


NEW  YORK 
26  FEBRUARY 


I  am  your  debtor  for  two  letters,  dearest. 
I  delayed  answering  the  first  in  order  to  let 
our  correspondence  get  once  more  in  step. 
We  do  not  average  more  than  one  letter  a 
week,  and  it  is  better  that  they  succeed  one 
another,  as  orderly  letters  should.  How 
mischievous  it  is  of  you  to  take  my  remarks 
about  your  writing  in  such  a  refracted  light ! 
I  shall  not  soon  venture  to  speak  again  of 
those  little  thin  sheets  of  delight  you  send. 

You  pity  me  in  my  loneliness.  I  can  not 
say  I  bear  it  with  complete  patience.  But 
patience  is  all  I  have  for  it.  I  long  for  the 
end,  whatever  it  may  be.  But  longing  does 
not  clear  the  uncertain  future. 

Why  should  I  be  displeased  at  your  going 
to  a  reception?  That  would  be  a  pretty 
piece  of  male  tyranny  —  when  I  am  unable 
to  share  a  gaiety  with  you  to  insist  that  no 
one  else  shall !  Dear,  you  must  follow  your 
own  heart,  assured  that  I  shall  never  wish 
you  to  act  other  than  sincerely. 


LOVE-LIFE  127 

I  sit  up  almost  all  day  now,  and  go  from 
room  to  room.     But  the  cough  remains. 

Ah  me !  for  every  bosom-nestling  joy, 
Behold  a  sudden  doom  far  in  the  sky ! 


NEW  YORK 
7   MARCH 


It  is  when  I  write  to  you,  Katherine,  that 
I  feel  most  acutely  how  slow  my  recovery  is. 
I  do  not  seem  able  to  gather  strength  beyond 
a  certain  point.  Perhaps  with  fairer  weather 
my  convalescence  will  take  a  new  start. 

I  much  wish  to  set  out  for  home  early 
next  month.  What  will  be  my  joy  once 
more  to  greet  your  sweet  face !  My  heart  is 
too  full  of  wild  longings  and  sad  foreboding 
for  me  to  dwell  upon  the  thought  of  our  meet- 
ing. 

Meg's  husband,  ill  on  his  w^edding  trip, 
will  gladly  be  at  home,  where  alone  we  find 
the  sanctuary  of  sorrow  and  pain  —  the  only 
place  where  one  can  suffer  without  humilia- 
tion. There  is  an  eternal  incongruity  be- 
tween marriage  and  sickness  —  between  the 


128  LOVE-LIFE 

lo  Hymen  and  the  Ai,  ai,  of  the  sick  bed  — 
which  even  the  pitifulness  of  Love  can  not 
justify. 

I  have  the  slightest  curiosity  to  know  what 
action  the  University  will  take  upon  the  de- 
cision of  the  legislature  to  consolidate  the 
classical  chairs.  If  it  threatens  to  disturb 
the  idyllic  little  home  of  Professor  Rochester 
the  decision  is  unpardonable.  What  are 
universities  for  if  not  for  professors ! 

Dearest  Katherine,  you  misunderstood  me 
in  my  last  letter.  By  "  following  your  own 
heart  "  I  meant  that  I  would  have  you  do 
whatever  your  heart  permits  —  that  is  what- 
ever you  do  not  feel  to  be  inconsistent  with 
the  love  you  have  for  me. 


LETTERS  SENT  FROM 
NEW  YORK 


NEW  YORK 
2  APRIL 


They  wrote  you  of  the  hemorrhages,  dear- 
est Katherine.  I  undertake  to  write  these 
lines  myself  —  they  are  lines  no  other  soul 
can  indite  for  me. 

In  answer  to  your  last  letter  so  golden- 
warm  with  love  and  memories  I  must  send 
words  of  despair.  The  disease  is  making 
headway.  It  is  a  struggle  now  of  vitality 
with  consumption,  and  where  is  there  any 
vitality  in  this  exhausted  frame?  The  bat- 
tle is  lost  before  begun.  As  yet  I  do  not  suf- 
fer greatly. 

I  have  written  for  mother  to  come.  In- 
deed she  may  be  here  before  my  summons 
reach  her.  I  have  picked  out  all  your  let- 
ters and  tied  them  up  so  that  they  will  come 
to  you,  if  I  never  do.  I  attend  to  such  mat- 
ters that  they  may  be  off  my  mind,  and  I 
beg  you,  too,  if  the  worst  happens,  to  keep 
such  of  my  books  as  you  care  for,  and  give 
131 


132  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

the  rest  with  my  manuscripts  to  my  family. 

Now,  Light  of  my  life,  I  must  turn  my 
face  to  look  upon  the  end.  I  can  not  turn  it 
from  you,  from  what  is  sweetest  and  divinest 
in  this  feeble  life  of  mine,  but  all  else  I  must 
shut  out  till  I  grow  in  love  with  darkness. 
I  can  not  think  for  you  —  nor  advise  you  one 
word  in  this  hour.  In  the  future  I  hope  you 
may  be  happy  in  some  way  which  a  merciful 
heaven  will  devise.  You  will  be  miserable 
now  and  I  will  not  try  to  console  you.  How 
can  I?  —  do  I  not  suffer  pang  for  pang? 

But  the  end  of  life  is  rest  for  me  and  for 
you.  When  I  see  the  inevitable  portal,  that 
gate  of  forgetfulness,  I  long  to  make  haste 
and  sink  within  its  protecting,  saving 
shadows. 

But  I  shall  have  strength  to  write  again, 
perhaps  many  times.  Goodbye  for  the  pres- 
ent. 

NEW  YORK 
12  APRIL 

Your  letters,  sweet  Katherine,  have  never 
been  so  dear  to  me  as  during  these  dark  days. 


LOVE-LIFE  133 

Your  love  never  shone  so  strong  and  clear  as 
now  when  fed  on  no  airs  of  hope,  but  burning 
up  from  the  depths  of  your  true,  great  heart. 

Oh,  Kate,  it  is  the  cruelest  stroke  of  fate 
that  threatens  us,  the  most  bitter  infliction 
which  life  has  for  innocent  hearts  —  the  de- 
feat of  life  and  love  upon  the  very  threshold 
of  their  fruitful  union.  What  we  have  dared 
and  dreamed  has  been  only  a  preparation  for 
that  life  which  I  fear  we  shall  never  taste. 
We  have  nothing  left  but  to  meet  the  in- 
evitable and  inscrutable  decree  with  a  seren- 
ity and  courage  as  great  as  our  love.  We 
can  show  the  same  spirit  in  misfortune  that 
would  have  made  fortune  for  us  something 
nobler  than  mere  success. 

The  doctor  holds  out  some  encouragement 
to  me  yet,  but  I  am  loath  to  take  it.  He 
thinks  I  shall  soon  be  able  to  travel,  and  that 
if  I  go  to  Colorado  I  may  still  recover  —  that 
is,  live  to  be  a  consumptive.  But  better 
early  death  than  such  a  life  —  such  a  death 
in  life.  A  few  years  of  invalidism,  of  slow 
torture  that  is,  in  the  very  presence  of  all  my 


134  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

unattainable    desires  —  that    would    be    no 
gift. 

I  look  for  mother  here  to-night  and  my 
heart  aches  for  her  when  I  think  how  incon- 
solable she  will  be.  In  one  of  your  late  let- 
ters, Katherine,  you  wonder  if  I  do  not  think 
it  heartless  in  you  because  you  do  not  come. 
How  can  you  think  me  so  wrapt  up  in  my- 
self, so  blind  to  the  obstacles  in  your  way? 
No,  no  —  but  I  can  not  write  more.  I  am 
very  weak. 

You  can  not  write  too  often  to 

Your 

RONSBY 


NEW  YORK 
18  APRIL 

This  is  only  a  few  lines  that  I  feel  able 
to  write  at  this  time,  even  to  you  my  best  and 
dearest  —  whose  sweet  letters  are  so  rich  in 
comfort  to  me  who  am  not  rich  in  it.  Do 
write  as  often  as  the  distillation  of  love  fills 
your  heart's  cup  of  pity  for  our  common  lot. 


LOVE-LIFE  135 

As  soon  as  the  weather  gives  promise  of  a 
few  clear  days  and  my  strength  gets  to  where 
it  was  before  the  last  attack,  mother  and  I 
shall  start.  My  only  hope  is  in  the  efficacy 
of  change  of  air. 

But  better  than  all  hope  is  the  inalienable 
consciousness  that  I  have  been,  am,  and  shall 
be  loved  by  my  heart's  queen,  the  tenderest 
and  sweetest  lady  in  the  world. 


NEW  YORK 
24  APRIL 

I  send  this  note,  dear  Katherine,  on  the 
eve  of  setting  out  for  Cathness.  When  you 
receive  it  we  shall,  if  nothing  happens,  be  at 
home.  We  can  not  go  to  Ashburnham  and 
to  you  for  obvious  reasons.  The  journey 
will  be  great  trial  to  my  strength.  But  it  is 
imperative.  As  soon  as  we  reach  home  I 
shall  let  you  know  how  the  way  used  me. 

Imagine,  dearest,  the  thoughts  that  oc- 
cupy me  at  this  moment,  and  the  longings 
youward.     I  can  not  write  what  I  have  in 


136  LOVE-LIFE 

mind.  The  weather  is  favorable,  and  we 
have  secured  the  state-room  in  a  sleeping 
car. 

Your  adventurous 

RONSBY 


VI 

LETTERS  SENT  FROM 
CATHNESS 


CATHNESS 
28  APRIL 


You  will  be  glad,  my  Katherine,  to  learn 
that  I  reached  home  without  mishap.  I  have 
good  hope  that  I  may  improve  with  the  ad- 
vancing summer. 

We  can  not  meet  yet  a  while,  dear,  but  be 
sure  I  shall  seize  the  first  opportunity  to  give 
myself  the  greatest  happiness  that  now  lies 
within  the  horizon  of  my  possibilities.  I 
must  first  settle  down  here  and  wait  for  be- 
ginning benefits  of  change  of  air.  The 
weather  will  be  steadier  and  more  innocent 
shortly. 

I  have  nothing  in  the  world  to  do  but 
seek  healing.  The  quest  of  the  Golden 
Fleece  was  not  more  difficult,  nor  was  its 
prize  half  so  glorious  —  for  I  seek  life  itself 
and  a  sweeter  Medea.  Who  knows  the  toils 
and  dangers  by  the  way?  There  is  one  sov- 
ereign lord  of  fortune,  that  is  Courage. 

Let  your  letters  be  not  few,  precious  Light. 
139 


140  THE  PROFESSOR'S 


3    MAY 

Bad  weather;  and  I  too  depressed  to  write 
you,  Kate  dearest.  To-day  I  am  better,  but 
still  in  no  wise  to  put  my  heart  on  paper. 
Wherefore  this  feeble  utterance. 

Your  sweet  letters,  which  have  been  com- 
ing to  me  from  east  and  north,  are  ever  ten- 
derer and  truer  with  the  weary  time.  I  con- 
fess it,  Katherine,  when  I  first  loved  you  I 
did  not  believe  you  capable  of  such  divine 
constancy.  I  loved  you  for  lighter  things. 
But  now  I  may  love  and  worship  you  for  all 
my  soul  can  figure  to  itself  of  worshipful  and 
lovely. 

You  will  have  patience  now  to  wait  till 
we  can  once  more  renew  our  vows  in  the 
sacred  solitude  of  the  oaks,  and  the  more 
sacred  presence  of  Love  who  will  "  sneeze  his 
approbation  on  the  right."  I  do  not  want  to 
leave  home  while  I  am  so  much  of  an  invalid 
as  to  need  particular  care. 


LOVE-LIFE  141 


CATHNESS 
9    MAY 


I  am  not  yet  able,  dear,  to  write  the  letter 
I  purposed  —  which  I  intended  should  carry 
to  you  some,  at  least  in  small  part,  presenta- 
tion of  my  present  mind  and  mood.  You 
know  what  weather  we  have  had.  While  I 
can  not  see  greater  strength,  I  do  find  myself 
sensibly  relieved  from  the  suffocation  which 
has  so  long  tormented  me. 

We  have  a  young  lady  cousin  of  mine 
staying  with  us,  who  is  already  become  the 
admiration  of  our  town.  Not  yet  twenty, 
she  is  a  widow  of  nearly  six  months,  and  be- 
longs to  that  class  of  women  I  find  unendura- 
ble. With  as  little  heart  as  understanding, 
she  conceives  herself  irresistible  and  talks 
of  her  triumphs  ad  nauseam.  Still  the  poor 
child  must  be  endured  and  as  soon  as  possible 
married  off.     Unhappy  the  man ! 

How  proud  I  am  of  my  dearest  Katherine 
when  I  see  such  miserable  frauds  of  women, 
A  tender  true  heart  that  loves  unselfishly,  and 
seeks  and  understands  a  love  which  is  not  the 


142  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

mere  surprise  of  the  senses  effected  by  an 
unwomanly  expenditure  of  womanly  charms 
—  but  why  should  I  go  on  to  describe  what 
I  love  to  her  I  love? 

CATHNESS 
16   MAY 

Saturday  I  received  a  letter  from  your  dear 
hand  and  heart,  and  it  bore  the  date  of 
Thursday.  Does,  then,  time  drag  so  slow 
with  you  that  you  get  two  days  wrong  in  your 
reckoning?  Ah,  me!  If  I  were  to  date  my 
letters  by  my  heart  I  think  I  should  have  to 
change  the  century  figures  at  least. 

Your  letter,  Katherine,  was  oversanguine 
of  seeing  me  soon.  Certainly  I  shall  come  to 
you  before  all  my  weakness  is  "  lost  in  the 
ruddy  glow  of  health  " —  if  that  may  ever  be. 
Improvement  is  so  very  slow,  and  I  have  so 
much  to  gain  before  I  shall  be  anything  but 
a  miserable  sick  man,  that  I  can  not  promise 
myself  as  near  the  happiness  of  being  with 
you.  I  am  still  so  weak  that  my  hand 
trembles  almost  too  much  to  allow  me  to 
write.     I  barely  master  it. 


LOVE-LIFE  143 

How  can  you  say,  dearest,  that  I  can  not 
realize  what  our  long  separation  has  cost 
you?  Do  you  love  me  better  than  I  love 
you?  It  is  impossible.  Your  tenderness 
and  constancy  have  surprised  and  over- 
whelmed my  heart  with  joy  —  have  made  me 
feel  speechless  and  powerless  —  from  the  ful- 
ness of  the  passionate  love  which  they  evoked 
in  my  own  breast  for  you.  Anything  and 
everything  borne  for  your  sake  seems  little 
to  me. 

I  can  never  comprehend  a  love  toward  me 
like  mine  toward  you,  nor  do  I  crave  it.  Not 
that  I  would  reject  it.  But  how  could  I 
know  or  profit  by  a  love  which  neither  in  life 
nor  death  finds  any  adequate  expression! 

If  heaven  wills  we  shall  some  day,  after 
many  years  of  loving,  discuss  which  of  us 
loved  best.  But  I  fear  —  how  sweet  the 
fear !  —  that  with  hands  clasping  close  we 
shall  come  to  no  sure  measure. 

Do  not  be  too  hopeless  of  seeing  me  in  a 
few  weeks,  for  we  can  not  tell  how  fair 
weather  may  build. 


144  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

Write,  write  to  your  convalescent 

RONSBY 


23    MAY 

Your  frightened  little  extravagant  note, 
dearest,  with  the  apprehension  that  if  I  were 
not  ill  I  must  be  pouting,  was  somehow  so 
weak  in  the  feet  that  it  was  overhauled  by  the 
letter  following  it  before  it  reached  my  hand, 
and  I  received  both  together.  But  letter  and 
note  were  so  full  of  the  tremulous  joy  and 
fear  of  your  priceless  love,  my  Katherine, 
that  they  made  me  unspeakably  happy.  In 
the  darkest  hour  of  pain  and  despair  I  have 
but  to  recall  to  mind  that  Katherine  loves 
me  —  really,  truly,  tenderly,  devotedly  loves 
me,  and  I  experience  such  a  thrill  of  joy  as 
the  angels  in  heaven  do  not  know. 

Oh,  my  tender-hearted,  darling  girl,  when 
will  this  weary  time  come  to  an  end,  and  the 
sun  rise  for  us  whose  glorious  light  reddened 
our  skies  and  freshened  the  winds  of  dawn 
in  our  hearts  two  years  ago!      It  is  the  sole 


LOVE-LIFE  145 

link  that  binds  me  to  the  love  of  life,  but  it 
is  mightier  than  all  ambitions,  all  dreams. 

People  talk  to  me  of  the  failures  of  mar- 
ried life  and  point  out  instance  after  instance 
where  selfishness,  idleness,  pride,  vanity,  ar- 
rogance and  worthlessness  have  made  homes 
into  hells  —  you  must  hear  not  a  few  dis- 
courses of  like  nature.  And  yet  while  I  fully 
comprehend  the  truth  of  it  all,  I  can  not  feel 
a  single  fear  save  that  our  marriage  may  not 
be  soon  enough  —  or  not  at  all.  That  I 
shall  always  love  you  I  know.  That  your 
love  will  be  as  constant  I  unfalteringly  trust. 
For  me  there  is^no  alternative  but  death. 

Shall  I  tell  you  of  the  highest  proof  of  my 
confidence  in  the  depth  and  strength  of  your 
love  ?  It  is  the  fact  that  notwithstanding  my 
dark  prospects,  and  my  solicitude  for  your 
happiness,  I  have  not  withdrawn  from  a  rela- 
tion which  would  certainly  be  a  sore  burden 
to  the  generality  of  young  women  situated 
similarly  to  yourself.  My  pride  and  scrupu- 
lousness would  compel  me  to  take  upon  my- 
self any  burden  that  could  lighten  another's. 


146  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

But  I  have  so  believed  in  the  pure  fervor  of 
your  love  that  I  have  not  dared  to  undertake 
the  responsibility  of  acting  for  you.  Can 
you  put  yourself  in  my  place,  and  doyou  un- 
derstand the  motives  to  which  I  refer  ? 

However,  as  you  say  in  your  own  letter, 
only  the  coming  years  can  fully  reveal  the 
love  that  fills  our  hearts  and  labors  now  in 
vain  for  utterance. 

The  last  two  days  I  have  gained  much  in 
strength.  I  do  walk  out  and  even  ride  horse- 
back. I  think  it  cannot  be  later  than  the 
second  week  in  June  when  I  shall  be  able  to 
see  you  —  to  spend  some  time  with  you  be- 
fore going  to  Colorado. 

Write  often. 

In  unspeakable  impatience  yours 


29  MAY 

This  morning  I  have  risen  with  the  sun, 
dearest,  for  the  purpose  of  getting  these  lines 
ready  to  send  to  the  early  post,  having  al- 
ready delayed  till  I  begin  to  stand  in  fear  of 


LOVE-LIFE  147 

one  of  those  desperate  little  notes  of  yours 
suspecting  me  of  some  incredible  aberration 
of  mind  or  misfortune. 

The  fact  is,  Katherine  dearest,  the  bad 
weather  of  last  week  depressed  me  much.  I 
was  feeble  and  dispirited.  But  in  the  last 
few  days  I  have  gained  amazingly.  Yester- 
day I  felt  better  than  I  have  since  the  illness 
began. 

An  old  army  surgeon  of  this  town  will 
have  it  that  I  have  not  suffered  any  falling 
away  of  the  lung,  but  that  my  trouble  is 
bronchial.  He  urges  me  to  spend  the  sum- 
mer roughing  it,  that  is,  in  crossing  the  plains 
in  a  wagon. 

Your  wish  that  I  should  be  in  Ashburn- 
ham  during  Commencement  I  can  hardly 
share.  I  remember  my  old  students  with 
liveliest  pleasure,  but  between  associations 
too  painful  to  revive,  and  others  too  sacred  to 
behold  the  profanation  of,  I  prefer  to  stay 
away. 

Yet,  thinking  further,  I  do  hope  to  be  in 
Ashburnham   before    Commencement,    and. 


148  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

once  I  am  there,  something  besides  the  senior 
class  miist  be  com-mensa  to  drive  me  away. 
There  is  one  magnet  in  Ashburnham,  or  near 
the  town,  sufficient  to  draw  me,  were  there 
any  avoBo<i,  from  the  region  of  Hades  —  it 
would  charm  me  back  from  Paradise. 

You  must  be  prepared,  dearest,  to  see  a 
sick  man  who  has  lost,  not  to  speak  of  out- 
ward semblance,  nearly  all  his  spirit  and  a 
large  share  of  his  judgment.  He  preserves 
nothing  intact  but  his  love  which  seems  to 
have  increased  at  the  expense  of  everything 
else.  Do  not  take  my  delay  as  a  model,  but 
write  immediately  to  your  anticipating 

RONSBY 


CATHNESS 
8  JUNE 

I  am  just  able  to  pen  these  lines,  dearest 
Katherine.  A  cold  rain-storm  a  week  ago  so 
aggravated  my  throat  that  I  had  the  greatest 
difficulty  in  breathing.  I  have  not  suffered 
so  much  before  —  in  the  same  length  of  time. 
It  all  followed  days  of  rapid  amendment  and 


LOVE-LIFE  149 

has  disheartened  me.     I  fear  it  will  delay  my 
visit  to  you. 

But,  sweet,  why  have  you  not  written? 
You  must  not  forget  that  I  live  by  the  breath 
of  your  love.  In  a  few  days  I  hope  to  do 
better  than  these  lines. 

Your  suffering  Ronsby 


13   TUNE 

Your  note  of  Monday  reached  me  to-day. 
I  sent  a  note  last  Thursday  telling  you  why 
I  was  delayed,  and  I  am  extremely  sorry  and 
vexed  to  find  it  not  posted.     It  goes  with  this. 

It  is  incredible  what  continuous  storms  we 
have  had,  and  equally  incredible  how  I  suf- 
fer in  such  an  atmosphere.  Two  weeks  of 
uninterrupted  fine  weather  would  do  me  a 
world  of  good.  To-day  dawned  fair  after  a 
night  of  rain,  but  now,  at  evening,  a  storm  is 
coming  out  of  the  west. 

Katherine  dearest,  I  know  what  you  have 
borne  from  delay.  I  think  I  know.  Only 
God  knows  what  it  has  cost  me.     I  can  not 


ISO  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

come  to  you  in  my  present  state,  although  I 
hoped  by  this  time  to  be  able  to. 

This  tension  of  waiting  has  become  almost 
too  great  for  my  poor  strength  to  bear.  Suf- 
fering has  weakened  my  will,  and  even  my 
understanding,  it  sometimes  seems  to  me. 
You,  dear,  while  you  love  me  at  all  must 
have  patience  with  my  misery,  I  would 
bear  greater  things  for  you. 

CATHNESS 
20  JUNE 

A  few  moments  in  which  to  pen  you  a  line 
and  get  it  off  in  to-day's  mail.  Yesterday 
and  to-day  have  been  the  first  really  fair 
days  we  have  had  this  June,  and  already  I 
improve.  I  have  been  brought  low  by  bad 
weather  and  must  gain  a  great  deal  before  I 
shall  feel  fairly  like  a  convalescent. 

It  gave  me  sorrow,  my  faithful  Katherine, 
to  learn  that  the  misunderstanding  of  an  un- 
lucky sentence  in  my  last  letter  caused  you 
pain.  I  said  "  while  you  love  me  at  all  " 
not  from  a  feeling  that  you  might  cease  to 
love  me,  but  from  a  sense  of  how  hard  your 


LOVE-LIFE  151 

task  would  be  while  you  love  me  at  all.  I 
can  not  feel  fully,  I  admit,  that  so  great  and 
sweet  a  treasure  as  your  love  is  surely  mine 
under  all  vicissitudes.  But  that  is  not  any 
fault  of  yours,  dearest.  It  is  because  I  find 
it  hard  to  realize  its  truth. 

There  are  many  things  I  long  to  say  to 
you.  My  heart  promises  itself  a  great  un- 
burthening,  and  a  great  strengthening,  from 
our  meeting.  My  happiness  seems  some- 
times near,  and  sometimes  very  far.  Noth- 
ing stands  in  our  way  but  feeble  health.  A 
summer  may  restore  that  or  it  may  never  be 
restored.     What  a  terrible  suspense ! 

I  close  to  reach  the  post. 

CATHNESS 
26  JUNE 

The  present  fair  weather  is  adding  to  my 
strength,  Katherine,  but  it  happens  to  me  as 
to  other  weakened  persons  —  the  process  of 
recovery  is  more  painful,  at  least  more  haras- 
sing, than  extreme  debility.  I  have  a  dread- 
ful aversion  to  pen  and  ink  which  only  my 
still  greater  desire  to  hear  from  you  enables 


152  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

me  fitfully  and  unsatisfactorily  to  overcome. 

It  adds  to  the  hardship  of  writing  that  I 
can  not  send  you  cheerier  news.  Everyone 
will  have  it  that  my  lungs  are  not  seriously 
affected,  that  the  difficulty  is  bronchial. 
Whatever  it  is,  it  so  distresses  me  that  I  do 
not  gain  strength  sufficient  to  effect  a  rapid 
cure. 

I  must  go  to  the  mountains  before  long  and 
I  fear  I  shall  not  be  in  a  condition  to  make 
you  a  visit.  Perhaps  you  will  say  that  any 
condition  is  suitable  for  that.  But  I  can 
not  find  the  resolution  to  go  to  your  father's 
house  till  I  look  more  like  filling  the  char- 
acter in  which  I  come. 

You  will  not  misunderstand,  Katherine 
dearest.  I  do  not  surmise  any  loss  of  sym- 
pathy. Your  family  has  always  been  very 
kind.  My  ow^n  pride  prescribes  my  action. 
I  hope  between  now  and  the  middle  of  July 
I  shall  pick  up  sufficiently  to  enjoy  the  privi- 
lege of  seeing  you. 

I  had  almost  forgotten  your  query  about 
Japan.     I  should  much  like  to  be  a  Jap.     If 


LOVE-LIFE  153 

you  have  any  influence  with  the  Mikado,  and 
he  will  assign  me  an  estate  in  the  most  de- 
lightful part  of  his  empire,  I  will  sever  the 
ties  that  bind  me  to  the  land  of  Our  Fathers 
and,  taking  with  me  what  is  dearer  to  me 
than  all  lands,  become  his  liege  subject. 
Your  cherry-eating,  fan-vibrating  invalid 

RONSBY 


CATHNESS 
INDEPENDENCE   DAY 

Five  days  of  rain  and  cloud  have  again 
brought  me  low,  dearest.  I  have  been  un- 
able to  write.  The  suffocation  I  endure  is 
unspeakable.  It  has  worn  upon  my  nerves 
and  made  me  utterly  unfit  to  be  seen. 

It  is  no  longer  of  use  to  try  to  give  ex- 
pression to  the  disappointment  and  unhappi- 
ness  which  my  condition  causes  me.  They 
are  beyond  expression.  They  are  as  great 
and  terrible  as  the  longing  I  have  felt,  and 
the  happiness  I  have  missed,  are  great  and 
sweet. 

And  how  can  I  comfort  you  when  I  have 


154  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

no  comfort?  When  I  can  not  bear  my  own 
wretchedness  how  shall  I  lighten  yours? 
There  is  but  one  thought  in  which  I  find  re- 
lief, such  as  it  is  —  our  suspense  and  my 
pain  can  not  be  of  much  longer  duration. 
This  summer  and  autumn  must  tell. 

Dear  heart,  you  remember  my  first  con- 
fession of  love  —  it  was  a  confession  of  my 
own  love.  Still  now  I  have  the  stranger 
confession  of  your  love.  Again  a  wonderful 
sense  has  ripened  within  me  during  all  these 
days  of  absence  and  pain  —  a  blessed,  ex- 
haustless  certainty  that  your  love  is  very 
love  and  the  sweet,  divine  sister  of  mine. 
Before,  I  believed  you  loved  me  and  thought 
you  loved  me,  but  it  is  only  of  late  that  I 
seem  to  know  it.  Do  you  call  this  a  sick 
man's  vagary? 

CATHNESS 
13  JUXY 

What  wild  surmises  will  not  have  passed 
through  that  dear,  high-carried  little  head  of 
yours,  Katherine,  on  account  of  my  long  de- 
lay?    I  must  confess,  sweet,  that  I  have  not 


LOVE-LIFE  155 

been  able  to  write  before.  Days  of  drench- 
ing rain  hindered  recuperative  energies  of 
body.  But  now  I  am  better,  and  planning 
to  start  for  Colorado. 

You  suggest  pretty  plainly,  Katherine,  that 
I  have  not  the  courage  to  live.  I  wish  it 
were  not  true.  You  have  more  of  such  cour- 
age than  I,  and  you  must  make  up  for  the 
lack  in  me.  I  shall  always  come  to  you  for 
the  inspiration  of  strength. 

There  seems  now  only  one  thing  in  the 
world  I  fear  —  ill-health.  If  ill-health  I 
ever  conquer,  there  is  no  fate  nor  fortune  I 
would  exchange  for  mine,  because  you  will 
share  it  whatever  it  may  be. 

Your  martyr  of  love  and  patience 


CATHNESS 
24  JULY 

You  doubtless  have  looked  for  a  letter 
from  the  far  west,  dearest  Katherine,  and 
here  comes  the  old  post-mark  of  that  little 
town  —  of  which  you  know  so  little  as  not 
to  know  that  it  prospers  two  railways,  and 


156  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

that  it  is  possible  for  the  naughty  lover  of  the 
sweetest  lady  in  the  world  to  escape  to  the  far 
mountains  without  passing  through  Ash- 
burnham,  the  home  of  that  lovely  girl  and 
object  of  his  avoidance. 

I  was  too  unwell  to  venture  on  the  journey 
last  week.  I  have  been  actually  unable  to 
write,  or  I  should  have  told  you  sooner  of  the 
delay.  Since  yesterday  I  am  better  and  in 
hopes  I  shall  breathe  the  dry  air  of  Colorado 
before  the  end  of  the  week.  All  arrange- 
ments are  made  even  to  purchase  of  tickets. 

These  letters,  my  darling  Light,  report  no 
good  news  and  are  most  unsatisfactory.  All 
our  future  is  in  such  a  dense  mist  as  to  blot 
out  the  sweet  visions  absent  lovers  use  to 
console  separation. 

We  can  not  discuss  our  plans  for  the  happy 
time  to  come  with  any  heart.  We  can  not 
even  praise  Love  between  us  for  so  fearful 
a  joy  as  his  presence  is  to  us.  We  can  only 
clasp  hands  silently  in  the  dark,  and  with  a 
patience  akin  to  despair  await  the  uncertain 
outcome. 


LOVE-LIFE  157 

Only  a  man's  heart  knows  the  pain  it  is 
to  make  the  object  of  its  love  and  tenderest 
worship  a  sharer  in  such  gloom,  instead  of 
the  happy  bride  and  the  sovereign  lady  of 
his  whole  and  happy  life. 

A  thousand  things  remain  unsaid  between 
us,  but  I  trust  your  true  and  deep  heart  to 
divine  them. 


VII 

LETTERS  SENT  FROM 
COLORADO 


DENVER 
4  AUGUST 


Katherine  darling 

A  word  must  satisfy  my  desire  to  write 
and  yours  to  hear. 

I  reached  Denver  last  night  in  better  spir- 
its than  when  on  Monday  afternoon  I  left 
home  —  and  that  notwithstanding  the  fatigue 
of  a  long  journey,  and  the  annoyance  of  even 
longer  delays.  Through  the  failure  of  roads 
to  connect,  and  delays  by  washouts,  I  grad- 
ually became  used  to  the  dry  thin  air  of  Colo- 
rado and  already  feel  great  relief. 

I  have  to  send  so  many  letters  to-day  that 
I  must  beg  your  indulgence  for  this.  Write 
at  once  that  I  may  be  assured  that  the  golden 
fetter  which  I  carry  about  the  world,  and 
which  links  me  to  life  and  hope,  is  not  loosed 
at  its  other  end. 


TALAPACO 
17   AUGUST 


Another  letter,  Katherine  dearest,  in  that 
long,  long  correspondence  which  had  made 


i6i 


162  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

the  very  look  of  paper  and  ink  suggestive  to 
me  of  hope  deferred  and  heart-sickness. 

How  near  we  seemed  last  fall  to  that  hap- 
piness which  is  among  the  few  things  in  this 
world  that  I  have  been  content  to  adore  in 
great  entirety,  without  analysis. 

We  were  to  be  happy  first  of  all  because 
\\t  were  to  be  together.  Then  because  we 
were  to  have  a  thousand  opportunities  to 
serve  each  other.  How  many  pursuits  in 
common!  How  many  little  plans  for  our 
own  happiness  and  the  happiness  of  others! 
How  divine  and  sweet  the  paths  of  duty  and 
of  w^isdom-seeking  which  we  were  to  tread 
with  inseparable  feet  of  love ! 

But  I  told  you  I  could  not  analyze  that 
happiness  which  enchains  me  to  life.  Those 
are  not  its  elements.  It  is  not  in  pursuits  or 
duties  or  enjoyments,  but  there  is  a  real  God 

Ah,  it  eludes  us  like  a  mirage ! 

But  all  these  things  are  so, 

And  all  the  world  is  bitter  as  a  tear ! 

I  do  not  write  these  despondent  lines  be- 


LOVE-LIFE  163 

cause  of  any  special,  or  new,  cause  of  de- 
spair. I  am  even  slightly  better,  or  at  least 
easier.  But  certainly  the  disease  is  stubborn. 
I  get  but  little  sleep  at  night  by  reason  of 
coughing,  and  have  so  little  strength  and  en- 
ergy by  day  that  a  short  walk  exhausts  me. 
For  reading  and  writing  I  have  lost  every 
inclination.  What  this  climate  will  do  for 
me  I  have  not  yet  seen,  but  I  begin  to  despair. 
I  fear,  Katherine,  you  do  not  say  how  ill 
you  are.  Trouble  and  care  wear  upon  you 
terribly,  just  as  you  revive  with  great  fresh- 
ness and  vigor  under  the  stimulants  of  joy 
and  hope.  Unhappy  I  that  cause  you  pain ! 
As  always  and  ever  yours 

TALAPACO 
28  AUGUST 

In  many  of  my  letters,  dear  Katherine, 
written  under  the  discouragement  of  pain  and 
depression,  I  have  no  heart  to  try  to  tell  you 
the  untenable  things  that  love  continually 
prompts  to  say,  and  I  write  you  little,  meagre 
notes  about  my  sufferings.     Oh,  how  great 


164  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

and  patient  your  love  is  that  makes  so  much 
of  the  feeble  words  of  tenderness  that  my 
poor  letters  sometimes  convey!  If  they 
"  come  like  refreshing  breezes  from  the 
west,"  imagine  the  storm  of  imprisoned  emo- 
tions from  which  they  proceed. 

If  it  were  not  for  you,  darling,  I  know  that 
all  the  misery  of  these  months  would  have 
utterly  destroyed  my  susceptibility  to  every- 
thing sweet  and  joyful  and  beautiful.  But 
the  simple  thought  of  you  refreshes  and  re- 
stores me.  When  nothing  else  will  stimu- 
late my  exhausted  and  nerveless  sense  from 
its  torpor,  your  name,  or  some  token  of  you, 
will  awaken  the  nameless  ecstasy  which 
dazed  me  for  more  than  a  week  together  one 
spring  we  remember. 

And,  oh,  how  I  gloat  over  your  dear  letters 
and  their  precious  assurance  of  love.  But 
it  is  so  vain!  so  vain!  — to  try  to  unbur- 
den my  poor  heart  on  paper.  It  aches  more 
and  more  at  the  thought  of  its  unattainable 
happiness. 

I  am  glad  to  tell  you  that  I  have  walked 


LOVE-LIFE  165 

two  miles  and  ridden  on  horseback  as  many 
as  eight  without  great  fatigue.  But  the 
cough  remains,  especially  at  night. 

You  must  not  let  my  condition  interfere 
with  your  journeying,  Katherine  dear.  You 
need  the  relief  change  of  scene  gives,  and  we 
can  manage  not  to  be  wholly  without  news 
of  each  other.  Then  I  feel  very  hopeful  of 
being  better.  This  is  my  twenty-seventh 
birthday.  It  seems  a  long  time  since  I  was 
born. 


TALAPACO 

11    SEPTEMBER 

When  I  have  gained  sufficient  strength  to 
write,  dearest,  I  scarcely  have  sufficient  cour- 
age to  tell  you  that  I  have  had  a  backset,  and 
improvement  is,  at  least  for  the  time,  checked. 

It  seems  that  to  you  I  am  under  obligations 
to  get  well,  that  I  must  not  fail.  No  one 
else  has  such  interest  in  my  health.  I  know 
how  patient  and  hopeful  you  are,  and  yet 
it  will  not  relieve  me  from  an  almost  appre- 
hensive sense  of  respdnsibility.     How  fool- 


166  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

ish  I  am,  you  will  say.     And  so  I  am  —  but 
when  was  ever  Love  altogether  wise  ? 

I  seem  to  have  recovered  my  usual  strength 
—  that  is,  now  usual  —  but  the  last  ten  days 
I  have  suffered  extremely.  Every  afternoon 
a  storm  has  risen  back  of  us  in  the  mountains, 
and  if  the  rain  did  not  as  frequently  reach 
us,  we  had  its  atmospheric  conditions. 
Doubtless  this  has  aggravated  the  malady. 

You  will  soon  start  journeying,  my  high- 
heart,  and  in  your  faring  you  must  not  ne- 
glect me.  A  letter  will  reach  me  from  any 
place  in  the  country  as  well  as  from  Ash- 
burnham. 

How  can  you  speak  of  my  "  shunning  " 
you,  Katherine,  even  in  fun  —  is  it  that  the 
poor  child  tries  to  make  fun  to  conceal  the 
aching  heart?  You  know  the  only  reason 
that  I  did  not  visit  you  was  that  I  was  in  no 
fit  condition  to  be  guest  at  any  house.  Per- 
haps you  do  not  know  how  dreadfully  de- 
pressing this  illness  is,  and  how  one  suffering 
it  has  not  enjoyment  of  a  single  faculty,  or  of 
a  single  feeling.     I  do  not  purpose  to  return 


LOVE-LIFE  167 

to  Ashburnham  till  I  am  greatly  improved 
—  if  that  may  ever  be  —  and  then  you  shall 
see  how  carefully  I  shun  you. 


TALAPACO 
12   OCTOBER 

You  will  have  been  disappointed,  Kath- 
erine,  at  not  finding  a  letter  awaiting  your 
return.  But  you  must  know  that  other  folks 
make  excursions  too.  While  you  were  flit- 
ting from  town  to  town  I  was  on  a  camping 
trip  to  Manitou  and  The  Garden  of  the  Gods. 
I  read  your  letters  from  Boston  and  Phila- 
delphia for  the  first  time  yesterday.  I  do 
not  know  but  only  fancy  you  are  at  home, 
and  I  do  hope  the  trip  was  helpful  to  my 
darling,  high-hearted  girl. 

A  camping  tour  of  two  hundred  miles  was 
certainly  good  for  me.  The  cough  had  kept 
me  in  bed  the  greater  part  of  days.  Weather 
was  unsettled  and  I  had  taken  cold.  But 
jolting  along  in  a  covered  wagon  and  sleep- 
ing in  a  tent  afforded  great  relief  from  the 
suffocation. 


168  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

Season  for  campers  is  getting  late,  still  I 
must  go  again  this  year.  And  next  spring 
—  if  I  live  till  then  —  I  must  fit  myself  for 
a  long  campaign. 

Would  not  your  mother,  or  your  father,  or 
the  lately  wedded  pair  come  and  spend  next 
summer  with  you  in  sight  of  the  noble  moun- 
tain parks?  We  might  then  be  together. 
How  much  that  would  do  for  me,  who  can 
tell  ?  Certainly  it  is  the  only  thing  that  still 
has  power  to  make  me  wish  to  live.  To  live 
is  to  be  with  you.  That  is  the  last  great  un- 
submerged  highland  of  my  life's  desires. 

Another  time  a  better  letter. 

TALAPACO 
6   NOVEMBER 

You  have  long  expected  these  lines,  dear 
Katherine.  I  have  long  been  unable  to  write 
them,  and  at  last  I  almost  feel  like  taking 
refuge  in  some  friendly  hand  to  do  it  for  me. 

But  no  —  we  have  lived  in  the  face  of  a 
great  calamity,  and  when  it  is  time  to  take 
any  resolution  in  regard  to  it,  we  must  do  it 
together. 


LOVE-LIFE  169 

I  have  been  very  sick.  I  can  not  give  you 
any  idea  of  what  I  suffered,  and  now  I  am 
just  able  to  be  up  a  few  hours  in  the  twenty 
four.  My  power  of  recovery  I  no  longer  be- 
lieve in.  I  have  gained  nothing  with  the 
exception  of  the  temporary  stimulus  from  a 
new  climate  —  the  disease  has  gone  steadily 
on.  , 

Katherine  dear,  it  is  not  wise  for  us  to 
entertain  further  hopes.  I  can  not  bear  that 
you  should  go  on  in  any  illusion  which  must 
soon  be  dispelled.  I  write  dispassionately 
because  all  passion  of  words  is  less  than  the 
things  I  feel.  Were  I  even  to  live  a  few 
years  of  the  invalidism  they  call  recovery,  I 
should  not  be  myself. 

My  vigor  of  mind,  as  well  as  of  body,  has 
been  permanently  injured.  I  have  been 
brought  to  renounce  all  hopes  of  life  because 
a  dim  and  fluctuating  hope  is  far  greater  tor- 
ture to  me  than  utter  resignation. 

I  can  advise  nothing.  My  heart  aches  for 
myself  and  feels  unutterable  depression  for 
you  that  I  have  made  thus  unhappy. 


170  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

I  must  leave  it  all  to  you,  as  I  leave  life  to 
you.  I  am  too  feeble  to  feel  much  save  one 
thing  —  a  love  that  is  my  poor  life,  and  yet 
far  greater. 

TALAPACO 

17   NOVEMBER 

My  Katherine,  your  letter  overwhelms  me 
with  a  flood  of  emotion.  I  have  thought  of 
nothing  else  for  two  days  but  the  great,  sweet 
soul  revealed  in  those  high-hearted  lines  — 
how  it  is  the  very  fulfillment  of  my  dream 
and  ideals  —  what  I  dared  not  ever  hope  to 
see. 

Oh,  Kate,  you  say  I  seem  to  want  to  put 
you  from  me  and  that  I  have  misread  you. 
In  this,  dear,  you  misread  me,  save  in  the 
opinion  that  I  have  not  always  had  a  faith 
equal  to  the  strength  of  your  truth.  But 
would  it  not  be  great  presumption  for  one  to 
imagine  himself  loved  with  that  divine 
strength  and  perfect  passion  which  only  the 
sad  fortune  of  our  lives  enables  you  to  prove 
so  soon? 

I  have  always  made  it  a  rule  to  expect  of 


LOVE-LIFE  171 

others  as  little  as  possible,  and  not  to  em- 
barrass anyone  by  taking  him  for  a  saint 
or  a  hero.  And  dear,  if  I  have  not  been 
willing  to  exact  of  you  all  your  great  heart 
stands  ready  to  give,  will  you  not  forgive 
me? 

But  I  do  feel  that  it  is  best  for  us  to  look 
upon  the  darkest  side  of  our  fortune  as  the 
one  fate  has  turned  to  us.  It  distresses  me 
beyond  measure  to  think  that  you  have  the 
bitter  fact  still  to  accept.  I  can  not  get  ready 
to  die  till  you  have  accepted  it,  and  till  I 
know  that  you  have  the  wisdom  and  strength 
to  do  what  is  wisest  and  best. 

It  would  be,  as  you  say,  much  easier  to 
die  than  to  live  on,  the  ruined  half  of  a 
broken  life,  were  it  not  for  this  very  bitter 
thought  in  death  —  that  we  leave  one  whom 
we  love  better  than  life  to  the  lonely  years  of 
a  companionless  existence.  But  after  all  it 
is  perhaps  the  easier  lot  to  die. 

I  do  not  suffer  a  great  deal  now  but  am 
very  weak  and  seldom  out  of  bed.  The  exer- 
tion of  writing  this  has  quite  fatigued  me, 


172  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

and  I  must  defer  much  I  would  say  to  another 
time.     Write  often  to 

Your  RoNSBY 


TALAPACO 

13    DECEMBER 

You  never  had  a  feebler  correspondent, 
dear  Katherine,  than  he  who  forces  himself 
to  scrawl  these  words.  For  two  weeks  I  have 
been  confined  to  bed  with  influenza,  and  I  am 
incredibly  weak  from  suffering  and  confine- 
ment. 

It  is  wrong  for  you,  darling,  to  distress 
yourself  because  of  your  inability  to  do  for 
me.  There  is  little  that  all  the  world  could 
do  if  it  were  leagued  to  help  me,  and  it  is  not 
a  little  after  all  that  you  do  who  are  my  great 
reason  for  caring  at  all  to  live. 

We  have  been  having  a  long  cold  spell 
here  with  abundant  ice  and  snow  for  the 
sports.  It  is  hard  on  me,  and  I  feel  that  the 
winter  and  I  have  embraced  for  mortal  com- 
bat.    Which  will  see  the  other  go  out  I  can 


LOVE-LIFE  173 

only  conjecture.  If  I  live  till  warm  weather, 
I  shall  have  a  new  chance. 

Oh,  how  much  I  should  like  to  say  a  thou- 
sand things  that  rise  inchoate  in  my  weak 
spirit  and,  like  the  feeble  shades  in  Virgil, 
will  never  rise  clara  in  luminis  ora.  My 
heart  is  full  of  love  and  pity  whenever  your 
dear  image  comes  before  me.  But  I  feel 
stricken  dumb  and  all  speech  seems  vain. 

Keep  up  courage,  Katherine  dearest  —  I 
do  not  say  hope,  but  courage.  I  feel  that 
your  own  health  is  in  great  danger  from  your 
painful  anxiety.  Spare  your  own  health 
and  live  —  for  while  you  live  my  better  part 
defies  the  gloom  of  Orcus. 

TALAPACO 

NEW   year's   day 

My  anxiety  to  hear  from  you,  dearest, 
urges  me  to  endeavor  a  letter.  Oh,  how 
weary  I  am  of  reporting  to  you  one  unfavor- 
able turn  after  another!  A  dull  attack  of 
the  old  neuralgia  and  a  fresh  cold  have 
greatly  aggravated  the  cough. 


174  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

The  New  Year  opens  with  a  bright,  cold 
morning  over  a  world  of  snow.  It  does  not, 
however,  seem  like  a  New  Year  to  me,  but 
some  old  worn-out  year,  lived  through  ages 
ago,  whose  weary  paths  I  must  enter  upon 
again.  Where  are  the  high  and  hopeful 
resolutions  of  other  New  Years !  —  impel- 
ling tasks  to  be  finished  before  the  end!  — 
dazzling  visions  of  great  things  to  be 
achieved  in  the  long  perspective  of  future 
years!  The  very  faculty  of  hope  with  the 
power  to  resolve,  and  all  interest  in  life- 
tasks,  seem  to  have  left  me  forever.  I  hardly 
retain  my  identity. 

Your  letters  abate  no  jot  of  their  hopeful 
tone.  May  fate  some  day  grant  me  power  to 
reward  your  loving  trust!  The  miseries  of 
years  would  be  forgotten  in  one  short  season 
of  such  tranquil  joy  as  love  can  fill  our  lives 
with. 

How  easy  it  would  be  for  those  deaf  pow- 
ers of  heaven  to  cure  the  wrongs  of  the  past, 
when  they  have  Love  to  help !  Still  patience 
and  resignation  are  our  only  stays.     I  wait 


LOVE-LIFE  175 

for  the  warm  airs  of  spring  as  the  wrecked 
mariner  looks  for  the  rescuing  sail.  The 
question  is  —  can  I  live  till  then? 

I  write  under  the  painful  apprehension 
that  this  letter  may  find  you  sick  and  unable 
to  welcome  this  poor  New  Year's  greeting. 
How  poor  a  thing  is  a  letter!  One  hand- 
clasp, one  kiss  were  worth  a  thousand  of 
them. 

Ever  and  always  your 

RONSBY 


TALAPACO 
16   JANUARY 

By  this  time,  dearest  Katherine,  you  are 
wanting  to  know  how  I  fare.  Well,  I  get  up 
every  day  notwithstanding  there  is  no  let-up 
in  distressing  weather.  Snow  has  covered 
the  ground  since  the  first  of  December,  and 
last  night  we  had  a  fresh  fall  and  freeze-up. 

I  have  opportunity  to  secure  the  manag- 
ing editorship  of  a  newspaper  in  one  of  the 
nearby  towns.  If  my  health  only  permitted 
me   to   undertake   the   duties !  —  which    of 


176  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

course  it  does  not.  I  think  I  might  discharge 
the  merely  editorial  labor.  But  even  to  do 
that  I  must  make  a  gain  of  strength  with  the 
spring. 

How  happy  I  should  be  if  it  were  to  turn 
out  as  I  wish!  Then  we  might  renew  our 
old  drives,  but  this  time  through  The  Gar- 
den of  the  Gods  and  the  glens  of  Manitou. 
Could  you  come  to  stay  somewhere  in  my 
neighborhood  next  summer?  You  know  I 
can  not  reach  the  fulfillment  of  our  great  de- 
sire of  being  together  —  but  we  might  at 
least  be  near  each  other. 

I  know  you  have  no  idea  of  the  change  ill- 
ness has  made  in  my  person.  How  would 
you  relish  a  cadaverous  and  feeble  lover?  — 
a  lover  with  bronchitic  tones  and  not  energy 
sufficient  to  respond  to  your  most  moderate 
exactions?  Have  you  realized  such  condi- 
tions as  actually  mine  ?  —  or  would  they 
strike  you  with  most  painful  surprise?  It 
seems,  you  say,  that  your  place  is  with  me 
under  all  circumstances,  and  surely  I  can 
not  defend  an  opposite  opinion.     But  then 


LOVE-LIFE  177 

we  should  be  freed  from  the  constant  presence 
of,  and  daily  dependence  upon,  strangers. 

I  have  not  more  patience  than  there  is  real 
need  of.  Heaven  knows  how  that  is.  What 
can  we  do?  You  make  a  suggestion.  With 
life  itself  in  a  most  uncertain  balance,  we  are 
bold,  it  seems  to  me,  to  plan  at  all.  I  fear 
you  distress  and  rack  your  dear  head  with 
schemes  to  effect  the  impossible.  You  are 
so  often  ill  of  late,  I  fear  this  unhappiness  is 
wearing  you  out.  Tell  me  truly,  is  it  mental 
trouble  and  worry  that  so  sap  your  health? 
Oh,  what  shall  I  do  if  your  spirit  fails  you 
and  I  can  not  help  you!      Spare  me  this. 


18   JANUARY 

Your  short  letter  referring  to  Stanford's 
death  came  a  few  hours  ago. 

Ill  again,  and  as  ever  from  some  mental 
agitation  is  its  painful  preface.  How  ear- 
nestly I  pray  that  this  heartfelt  loss  of  a 
friend  may  at  last  release  you  from  the 
almost  ever-present,  haunting  thought  which 


178  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

your  distracted  heart  fed  with  its  best  blood. 

In  those  months,  long  ago,  I  was  not  un- 
aware in  any  important  particular  of  the 
turmoil  in  that  dear  breast,  which  often  ren- 
dered it  insensible  to  my  presence.  But  I 
hoped  that  in  the  end  it  would  grow  calm 
with  no  mingled  image  glowing  in  its  depths. 
Then,  too,  how  could  I  blame  you  when  I 
had  acted  with  such  indiscretion  as  to  claim 
you  in  the  very  agonies  of  the  old  attach- 
ment ?  Your  love  for  Stanford  did  not  prove 
what  both  had  hoped.  Still,  I  had  no  right 
for  that  reason  so  totally  to  disregard  it,  to 
count  it  as  nothing  from  the  moment  I  felt 
some  assurance  that  your  inmost  heart  was 
mine. 

But  we  are  happy  in  the  terrible  expe- 
riences of  the  last  two  years,  for  with  all  else 
it  has  ground  to  dust  it  has  not  spared  the 
doubts  and  involuntary  misgivings  of  those 
earliest  days.  My  only  anxiety  now  is  that 
you  should  forever  dismiss  from  your  soul 
the  last  wretched  reproaches.  If  turned 
from  there  no  other  heart  will  shelter  them 


LOVE-LIFE  179 

and  they  will  perish.  Rely  upon  my  per- 
fect love,  my  perfect  confidence,  nay,  more, 
my  pride  in  the  unequalled  devotion  and  con- 
stancy with  which  I  am  so  blessed  as  to  be 
loved. 

When  last  I  saw  the  dear  boy  in  New  York 
he  was  the  very  image  of  manly  vigor  and 
health.  I  little  dreamed  he  would  precede 
me  along  the  dusty  way  that  lights  us  to  the 
grave. 

I  still  hold  my  own  in  the  midst  of  bad 
weather. 

Yours  forever 


TALAPACO 

11    FEBRUARY 

To-day  I  am  strong  enough  to  sit  up  and 
write  a  few  lines  to  you,  dearest  Katherine. 
For  nearly  two  weeks  I  have  been  prostrate 
with  a  great  aggravation  of  illness.  It  is 
the  worst  attack  I  have  had  and  has  brought 
me  nearer  the  end.  Unless  my  strength  re- 
acts soon  I  have  but  a  short  time  to  live  — 
perhaps  three  or  four  weeks.     Nor  can  I  look 


180  THE  PROFESSOR'S 

upon  an  escape  from  this  attack  as  anything 
but  a  short  reprieve  of  an  inevitable  sentence. 

To-day  may  be  a  turning-point.  I  can 
not  say  —  this  disease  is  so  treacherous.  I 
have  done  with  hope,  however,  and  will  not 
again  be  lifted  up  only  to  be  dashed  into  an 
abyss. 

If  the  end  is  really  near,  shall  I  see  you? 
I  do  not  try  to  write  what  can  not  be  written, 
what  I  feel  at  this  moment  with  your  image 
in  my  heart. 

TALAPACO 
23    FEBRUARY 

Still  in  bed,  Katherine  dear,  unable  from 
weakness  and  the  inconveniences  of  illness  to 
be  about. 

Two  unanswered  letters  from  your  dear 
hand  lie  beside  me  on  my  pillow.  They  are 
very  brief  and  seem  to  bear  evidence  of  a  soul 
in  unutterable  misery.  Oh,  I  could  destroy 
myself  out  of  grief  when  I  think  it  is  I  who 
have  brought  you  to  this.  Is  it  not  mad- 
ness for  a  frail  mortal,  subject  to  such  scorns 
and  cruelties  of  nature,  to  dare  to  invite  an- 


LOVE-LIFE  181 

other  to  partake  of  the  nectar  of  love,  a 
draught  only  for  the  happy  gods?  —  a  mad- 
ness that  multiplies  our  miseries  a  thousand 
fold. 

Death  has  lost  all  its  terrors  for  me  save 
one,  and  that  is  because  my  dearer  self  is  yet 
beyond  all  assuaging  and  calming  power  of 
my  spirit.  I  can  answer  for  my  poor  self, 
but  how  can  I,  how  dare  I  die  for  you? 

I  have  sent  for  mother  to  come,  both  in 
view  of  the  danger  of  a  speedy  close,  and,  in 
other  event,  for  the  sake  of  her  presence. 
The  weather  is  fair  at  present,  but  we  have  to 
look  for  a  blustering  and  changeable  spring, 
unfavorable  to  sick  lungs. 

Now  my  Light,  if  your  continued  ill  health 
is  the  result  of  mental  anxiety,  without  any 
important  contributing  physical  cause,  what 
are  we  to  think  but  that  your  nature  is  far  too 
frail  and  sensitive  for  the  serious  responsi- 
bilities of  life?  I  know  what  cause  and 
excuse  you  have  for  excessive  sorrowing,  but 
I  would  rather  know  that  you  were  squarely 
sick  of  something  time  might  cure  than  that 


182  LOVE-LIFE 

all  this  distress  were  the  soul's  oppression 
under  the  cross  of  life. 

Write  me,  darling,  more  about  yourself  — 
what  you  do  and  what  you  think  of  besides 
this  poor,  unworthy  invalid,  the  equal  thrall 
of  Love  and  Death. 

TALAPACO 
8  MARCH 

If  my  unsteady  hand  finishes  this  page, 
Katherine,  my  treasure,  it  will  be  all  I  can 
hope.  My  condition  is  worse  only  in  that  I 
suffer  more.  We  are  having  a  great  snow 
storm.  You  must  not  stop  your  blessed  let- 
ters to  me,  darling,  because  I  can  not  answer 
them.     I  have  no  other  correspondent  now 

to  whom  I  write  avroy/aa^iKws. 

My  dreams  of  you  grow  more  and  more 
vivid,  and  I  have  lived  through  many  a 
lovely  season  by  your  side  absorbed  in  the 
tenderest  and  noblest  delights  of  life. 

But  my  hand  sinks  and  my  feeble  hours 
are  few. 

God  be  with  you.  Light  and  Life. 

RONSBY 
THE    END 

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'■i!?^ 


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IN  S)ACK|3 
FEB  2  7  \l 

Bt  CIS.  M  ' 


LD  21-50)ic8,32 


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